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August 12, 2009

Larijani’s Politics and the Rape Allegations

Yesterday,  Raja News (pro-Ahmadinejad) reported that Larijani called and congratulated Mousavi on the night of the election:

What he did on the afternoon of the Election Day by calling Mousavi and congratulating him on the finalization of his presidency cannot be overlooked. As the head of a branch of power, he is considered to have access to firsthand and classified information and news. When he congratulated Mousvai at a time when voting hours had not even ended yet, it made him delusional and encouraged him to take the seditious and provocative positions and behaviours which disturbed people’s security and calm and significantly harmed the might and honor of the system.

The article is an attack against Larijani and even attempts to cast doubt on his doctoral degree. However, it is inadvertently very damaging to Ahmadinejad and other newspapers are now picking up the story.
Today, Ali Larijani says detainees were not raped:

A day after vowing to investigate allegations that election protesters were sexually abused in Iran’s prisons, the parliament speaker dismissed the charges as false.
Ali Larijani said today that a commission set up to look into allegations of prisoner abuse amid the unrest over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection had already concluded that none were raped.

Not so, says the L.A. Times:

Nearly a month later, she can’t erase images of the dying young man from her mind.
All but two of his upper teeth had been knocked out. His nails had been pulled out. His head had been bashed in. His kidneys had stopped working. But what most disturbed her, she said, were the stitches around his anus — a sign, the nurses told her, that he had been raped.
Iranian reformist websites and activists in recent days had identified 19-year-old Mohammad K. as one of the protesters arrested during Iran’s postelection unrest, locked up in the Kahrizak detention facility and severely beaten.
He died in the late hours of July 16 or the early hours of July 17 at a hospital in Tehran, according to the websites.

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