Another November detainee reveals the actions of the Islamic Republic: torture, forced confessions, and attempted kidnapping in Türkiye

One of the detainees from the November 2019 protests in Iran, who now lives in Türkiye, revealed another dimension of the widespread human rights violations committed by the Islamic Republic regime.

Fatemeh Khoshrou, one of the detainees of the November 2019 protests, told the Voice of America Persian Service that the regime’s agents subjected her to excruciating physical and mental torture after her arrest. According to Ms. Khoshrou, they eventually released her on the condition that she return to Turkey, provide them with personal information, and bring her to the Iranian border.

Ms. Khoshrou was recently sentenced to one year in prison in absentia by Branch 1 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Khorramabad. According to the ruling, a copy of which was provided to VOA by Ms. Khoshrou, Judge Hassan Karampour charged her with making videos of protest rallies and sending them abroad to participate in them.

Fatemeh Khoshrou said her trial was held in absentia on October 4, and she has been given 20 days to appeal the verdict.

Arrest, beatings, and torture

Regarding the interrogations she underwent during her detention, Fatemeh Khoshrou told VOA that she was repeatedly beaten and subjected to physical and psychological torture. She said that security forces repeatedly put her in front of a video camera to force her to confess and threatened that her family would be arrested if she did not cooperate with the Islamic Republic.

Ms. Khoshro says, "During interrogations, they forced me to say whatever they wanted in front of the camera. They put so much pressure on me and tortured me mentally and physically that I agreed to whatever they said."

Ms. Khoshrou says that in November 2019, while traveling to Iran to visit her family, she participated in the protests held in Khorramabad. She says that she was arrested and beaten by security forces and spent more than 60 days in a detention center of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, Evin Prison, and Khorramabad Prison. Ms. Khoshrou said that she was eventually released from prison on bail of 100 million Tomans, temporarily pending the completion of the legal proceedings.

According to Ms. Khoshrou, after her arrest, security forces went to her father's house and, while searching the house, confiscated some of her identification documents, including her passport and Turkish residence card, for a while.

Applying pressure for complicity in kidnapping plot in Türkiye

According to Ms. Khoshrou, the interrogators had asked her to help the Islamic Republic kidnap someone in Türkiye in exchange for her release.

He told VOA that the interrogators gave the handsome woman personal information and said they would release her if "you could trap her for us."

He added: "They threatened to arrest family members if I did not take the person they wanted to the Iran-Türkiye border."

Fatemeh Khoshrou says that she finally got her identification documents back and left Iran on Saturday, September 2 of this year.

Pressure on detainees to cooperate with security agencies in trapping dissidents abroad is unprecedented. Masih Alinejad, an independent journalist and host of the Voice of America program Tablet, whose brother Alireza Alinejad was recently sentenced to 8 years in prison, told VOA: “The IRGC and my sister’s family had a plan to take me to Turkey under the pretext of meeting my mother and kidnap me there. My brother exposed their plan and wrote to me publicly on Instagram: ‘Don’t go to Turkey.’ Now they have sentenced my brother for exposing the IRGC’s collusion.”

Last November, people in various cities in Iran took to the streets to protest the sudden increase in the price of gasoline. According to Reuters, around 1,500 protesters were killed on Khamenei's orders. The Iranian government did not punish the perpetrators of the crackdown, but instead arrested and sentenced the protesters.

According to Voice of America, 36 residents of Behbahan and those arrested during the November 2019 protests have been sentenced by Criminal Court 2 of Behbahan County to a total of 109 years in prison, 2,590 lashes, and a fine of more than three million Tomans.

The United States says the Islamic Republic is spending its wealth, rather than the Iranian people, on supporting terrorist groups and destabilizing the Middle East. The United States has also repeatedly condemned the institutionalized financial corruption and looting of Iran's God-given assets by regime affiliates, calling them among the main causes of Iran's economic and financial problems.

US President Donald Trump has also repeatedly referred to the issue of Iranian protesters and America's support for the Iranian people, saying that "the protesters in Iran are seeking freedom and we fully support them."

The US State Department has also repeatedly and on various occasions condemned the violent confrontations and widespread repression of protesters, as well as the repeated and persistent violations of the rights of Iranian citizens by the ruling regime in that country.

Source: Voice of America