Iran: Enforced detentions, electric shocks and sexual violence against children as young as 12 amid brutal crackdown on protests

ROME – Iranian intelligence and security forces have committed horrific acts of torture, beatings, floggings, electric shocks, rapes and other sexual violence against even children as young as 12 to suppress their involvement in the protests. He denounced and documented it Amnesty International. Six months after the popular uprising, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the organization exposes the torture methods that the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij paramilitary forces, the Public Security Police and other security and intelligence forces have used against boys and girls in custody to punish, humiliate and extract confessions.

Kidnapped and tortured children. The arrested children, like the adults, were initially taken to detention centres. After days or weeks of solitary confinement, they were transferred to prison. Plainclothes officers kidnapped others from the streets during or shortly after the protests, took them to unofficial locations such as warehouses, and tortured them before abandoning them in remote locations. Many children were held alongside adults, contrary to international standards, and subjected to the same patterns of torture and other ill-treatment. An adult former detainee told Amnesty International that, in one province, officers forced several boys to stand in a row with their legs spread next to adults and administered electric shocks to their genitals.

Forced confessions. Most of the children arrested in the past six months have been released, sometimes on bail, pending investigation or indictment. Many were released only after being forced to sign letters of “repentance” and promising to refrain from “political activities” and only join pro-government demonstrations. Before releasing them, the officers threatened them that they would be prosecuted on charges carrying the death penalty or that they would arrest their relatives if they filed charges. In at least two cases documented by Amnesty International, despite the threat of reprisals, family members of the victims filed official complaints with the judicial authorities, but no one was investigated.

The witness. “My son told me they hung him up to the point that he felt like his arms were going to tear off. He was forced to say whatever they wanted because they raped him with a pipe. They took his hand and forcibly took his fingerprints,” a mother told Amnesty.

Children kidnapped and then abandoned. Several students were kidnapped for having written the slogan “Woman, life, freedom” on a wall. A relative of one of the victims told Amnesty that plainclothes officers took the boys to an unofficial location, tortured and threatened them with rape, and then dumped them semi-conscious in a remote area hours later. “They gave me electric shocks in the back, hit me in the face with the back of a gun, beat my feet and hands with batons. They threatened that if we told anyone, they would arrest us again and do even worse and then hand over our bodies to the families,” said one of the children.

Psychological torture and humiliation. “We were told to make chicken noises for half an hour, until we ‘lay eggs’. They forced us to do push-ups for an hour. I was the only child there. In another detention center, they put 30 of us in a cage made for five people.” The mother of a girl who was arrested by the Revolutionary Guards told Amnesty International: ‘They accused her of burning her veil, insulting the Supreme Leader and wanting to overthrow the Islamic Republic. She was told she would be sentenced to death. They threatened not to tell anyone… They forced her to sign and fingerprint the documents. She has nightmares, she doesn’t go anywhere anymore. She can’t even read school books”.

Lack of access to care. The children were also held in inhumane conditions, including overcrowding, poor access to toilets and wash basins, deprivation of food and clean water, exposure to extreme cold and prolonged isolation. The girls were detained by all-male security forces with no regard for their specific needs. The children were also denied adequate medical care, including for injuries sustained under torture.