One Year Prison Sentence for Protesting Police Commander’s Assault on 15-Year-Old Girl
“Elham Asadi” was sentenced to one year in prison for protesting a police commander’s sexual assault on a 15-year-old girl.
Elham Asadi, an English language teacher, posted a message on Instagram during the nationwide protests of 1401 (2022) in protest against the sexual assault of a 15-year-old Baloch girl. Despite not participating in the protests that took place in Zahedan in response to this incident and only expressing her protest on Instagram, she has been sentenced to imprisonment.
Security forces violently arrested Elham Asadi in the city of Chabahar on August 22, 1402 (2023) without presenting any court order, and transferred her to Zahedan Central Prison after two days. She was temporarily released a few days after being imprisoned on a bail of 200 million tomans.
According to reports by human rights activists in Sistan and Baluchestan, “Ibrahim Kochakzaei,” the former commander of the police force in Chabahar, took a 15-year-old girl from Dashtiari, a suburb of Chabahar, to his rest room at his workplace on the pretext of questioning her in September 1401 (2022), and then sexually assaulted her. After this incident became public, people in Sistan and Baluchestan began protesting. These protests continued until October and reached their peak, coinciding with a “Bloody Friday” and suppression of people in which many Baloch people were killed.
Now, according to published reports, Branch 2 of Zahedan Revolutionary Court sentenced Elham Asadi to one year in prison on charges of “propaganda against the system.” In addition, she has been sentenced to a fine in another case on charges of “disturbing public opinion.”
The one-year prison sentence for Elham Asadi for protesting the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl has been issued at a time when some ordinary individuals charged with sexual assault in prisons have been sentenced to death, with their sentences carried out in recent months. However, after the killing of Mahsa Amini and the start of nationwide protests, many women and girls have been victims of sexual assault by regime agents but had no right to protest. Some of these girls even committed suicide due to psychological trauma following the assault. Justice that has never been upheld under Iranian law.
