Arman doesn’t sleep much anymore. “In my nightmare, I see someone is following me in the dark, ” he said. “I’m alone and no one is helping me.” He says his life was forever altered in early October, when he was arrested on the streets of Tehran for joining anti-government demonstrations, and then tortured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – known as the Sepah – for four days. The abuse was psychological and physical, he told CNN, including electric shocks, controlled drowning and mock executions. The 29-year-old says he was held in solitary confinement and intermittently beaten, before eventually being placed in a room with roughly two dozen other protesters, including a woman with cuts across her face and neck who said she had been sexually assaulted by security forces. Arman, whose name has been changed for his safety, says he saw the IRGC’s emblem on a desk, and again on the uniform of one of the men guarding him – but that he doesn’t know exactly where in Tehran the center was located because he was tasered and had lost consciousness before being driven there. In order to leave the detention center, Arman claims he was forced to sign a false confession saying he received money from the US, UK and Israeli governments to go out and create “chaos” in Iranian society. He was then told that if he engaged in any more “activism” he and his family would be hunted down and arrested, he said. What Arman claims happened to him and those allegedly detained alongside him isn’t an isolated incident. Instead, it’s part of a tried and tested playbook used by the Iranian government to stalk, torture and imprison protesters, in an ongoing campaign to squash political dissent.
Categories: Rechtsextremismus