- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran’s security forces, a leaked document understood to have been written by those forces says.
It has let us map what happened to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami who vanished from an anti-regime protest in 2022.
Her body was found nine days later. The government claimed she killed herself.
We put the report’s allegations to Iran’s government and its Revolutionary Guards. They did not respond.
Marked “Highly Confidential”, the report summarises a hearing on Nika’s case held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - the security force that defends the country’s Islamic establishment. It includes what it says are the names of her killers and the senior commanders who tried to hide the truth.
In something of a cultural paradox, Iran is worse on LGB rights but significantly better on T rights than its western peers. So stark is the contrast that cis-gay men and women are often under pressure to transition in an attempt to become more socially acceptable to social conservatives in power.
If you compare the Israeli response to October 7th with the Iranian response to Israeli’s bombing of their Syrian embassy or the US slaying of their General-turned-Ambassador Qasem Soleimani, I’d say they are some of the most hinged residents in the region.
They also haven’t successfully conducted a nuclear test to date. They have ballistic missiles with traditional munitions, and they have some hypersonic rockets that have outclassed western missile defense systems (as evidenced by the post-embassy retaliation into the Israeli desert). But their nuclear capacity isn’t even at North Korean tier, largely thanks to their lack of enrichable uranium.