Iran embarrassed by its 'Islamic' rape rooms

NY Times:

When he eagerly joined the mass street protests that followed Iran’s tainted June 12 presidential elections, Ibrahim Sharifi, 24, hoped only to add his voice to the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators demanding that the government nullify the results. He never imagined that he would eventually have a far greater impact, as the only person willing to speak publicly about the brutal treatment he was subjected to in prison, including rape and torture.

Mr. Sharifi, who recounted his ordeal to the opposition leader and former presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, and then released a video account last month on opposition Web sites, is now in Turkey. He said he fled Iran after a stranger stopped him on the street to tell him his family would be killed if he testified before a parliamentary committee that was investigating the torture and rape accusations.

“I felt that I was not safe anymore and I could put my family’s life in danger, too,” he said in a series of telephone interviews, in which he spoke in detail about the protests, his imprisonment and the psychological scars he said the abuse had left.

Since he was dumped by his captors on the side of a Tehran highway, he said, he has been terrified of being alone. First, he had trouble sleeping, fearing that the guard who raped him in prison would attack him again. Now he is convinced he is being followed by someone who means to kill him.

“I was ready to be tortured to death,” he said, his voice trembling. “But not ever to go through what happened to me there.”

Mr. Karroubi and another opposition leader and presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, have vigorously condemned the vicious tactics the security authorities used against the demonstrators, 72 of whom they say were killed. Yet, of all the allegations of brutality and abuse that were lodged, none have presented such a threat to the government as those involving rape and sodomy, which are culturally and religiously unacceptable in Iran.

...

Human rights groups say that Mr. Sharifi’s account conforms closely with those of other abuse victims. Omid Memarian, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, said he had confirmed the credibility of Mr. Sharifi’s story with people close to Mr. Karroubi.

“His narrative is consistent,” Mr. Memarian said. “He has no reason to risk making up a story like that, especially because he also met with judiciary authorities and demanded a thorough investigation.”

...

He said he remained handcuffed and blindfolded for four days in a cramped cell with about 30 other prisoners.

They were beaten senseless the first day, he said, and periodically after that over the next four days. Urine and blood covered the floor.

By the fourth day he was beginning to lose hope of getting out alive. He had trouble closing his mouth and he said he began vomiting blood.

“I told the guard that he should go ahead and just kill me if he wanted to,” he said, breaking into tears. “Then he called another guard and said ‘Take this bastard and impregnate him.’ ”

They took him out of the cell to another room where they pushed him against a wall that had handcuffs and two metal hooks to keep his legs open. The guard pulled down his underwear, he said, and began raping him.

“He laughed mockingly as he was doing it and said that I could not even defend myself so how did I think that I could stage a revolution.

...

There is more.

I have posted on the "Islamic" rape rooms before, but it is important to keep the character, or lack thereof, of this regime in focus. It also tells you something about Obama that he is willing to try to cut a deal with these monsters.