The Nudity of the Islamic Republic's Torture Machine: Show Executions, Sexual Violence, and Systematic Confession Extraction

In a report, "Hengao" discussed new revelations about the Islamic Republic's torture machine, show executions, sexual violence, and systematic confessions from protesters.

According to shocking reports by the human rights organization "Hengaw", during the nationwide protests of January 1404, the Islamic Republic of Iran used a series of organized, extrajudicial, and extremely violent methods to suppress protesters; methods that included mass arrests, transfers to unknown locations, severe physical and psychological torture, sexual violence, threats of rape, show executions, and forced confessions.

This human rights organization, through direct interviews with a number of detainees who were recently released on bail, has found that many protesters were transferred not to official detention centers and prisons, but to anonymous residential homes, sheds, and informal centers; places that did not even have the title of "detention centers" and operated effectively outside of any judicial oversight.

Detainees in these centers have been subjected to various forms of torture, including show executions, sexual violence, threats of rape, and threats of immediate death. The main purpose of this torture has been to extract quick, videotaped, and premeditated confessions against themselves and others.

According to this published information, a large portion of the detainees are teenagers and young people, and these individuals, regardless of gender, have faced sexual violence and naked threats. Threats of execution at four to five in the morning, hanging a noose around the necks of detainees while simultaneously playing the call to prayer, have been reported as common methods to break their psychological resistance.

One of these sources told Hengaw: "We were being pressured to admit that we were spies and that we wanted to send this information to networks outside the country."

He continued: "They were torturing us, blindfolding me and telling me to tear my clothes, then saying, 'You are a Halal to the IRGC.' I felt like someone was touching me. They were putting the noose around my neck and saying, 'If you don't write, we will execute you without a trial.'"

Hengao also confirmed in interviews with several detainees that the repressive forces had arrested men and women en masse, first transferred to unknown residential locations, and then separated them and sent them to different detention centers. Most of these individuals spoke of severe psychological torture, which they described as even more difficult to endure than physical torture.

According to the detainees, interrogators forced them to confess that they had been “tricked,” “taken money from certain people,” “used drugs,” or “are connected to networks abroad.” Every method was used to extract these confessions: “from interrogation in a prone position, to removing handcuffs and pretending to shoot a stray bullet.”

Another detainee said: "In the last few days, they poured drops into my eyes and said it was acid and you would soon go blind. That's how I confessed to everything they said and then I was released on bail."

In another part of these reports, Hengaw reveals the organized use of female interrogators to inflict psychological and sexual torture, especially against young men, a method that the organization describes as a new and deeply disturbing pattern in interrogations in the Islamic Republic.

One of the young male narrators said: “The first two or three days were just searches and filling in information. Then the number of detainees almost doubled. I had two interrogators, a female interrogator and a male interrogator. The male interrogator played the role of the good cop and the female interrogator played the role of the bad cop. They pressured me to say that I had a firearm. Sometimes they would point the gun at my forehead and say we will shoot. They said you have to admit that you took money from foreign services. I was made to lie on the floor for a whole day, maybe seven hours, and I was interrogated lying down. That woman pressured me to curse the victims of these protests. I am very ashamed of this. They were fully trained to severely psychologically abuse us. I was able to endure all the torture, but the psychological pressure to curse the victims has made my life unbearable. "They showed me photos of the bodies of the dead and said that if you don't confess, this is what will happen to you. That female interrogator poured hot tea on me, spit in my face while I was still lying there. She made me lie down and put her foot on my face. They treated us like slaves. Before I was released, they forced me to thank that female torturer."

Another narrator is a 19-year-old boy who says: "They kept us in a large house arrest center. They separated the men and women. They even separated us by age and transferred the teenagers to another place. I had three interrogators, two men and one woman. That female interrogator was very cruel. They kept telling me that they were going to kill me. They even said that they had informed my family of my death. I am very ashamed, it is audacity, but that female interrogator would put her sock in my mouth and say that I should curse the dead. I was fed up with this and wanted to take my own life. They treated us like animals. They would put a noose around my neck and say that we would execute you."

A 32-year-old woman in detention also said: "They came in with ropes, drills, and hooks and pointed at the ceiling and said, 'We are going to execute you.' They poured cold water on us and used a lot of sexual torture. Even a 12-year-old child was among the detainees. They told me that I was working with Mossad, and they also said that I received money from Kurdish parties for my activities. They tried very hard to get me connected outside of Iran. I kept hearing the sounds of people being tortured. There were so many people that we couldn't stretch our legs."

The other narrator is a 22-year-old young man who is unaware of the existence of the other narrators, but he also says: "I was detained in a residential house. I don't know who my interrogators were, but they beat me a lot. They threatened me, but what bothered me the most was the female interrogator who sexually tortured me. He forced me to kiss his foot. He humiliated me, he used extreme profanity. He forced me to kiss his foot several times. They even pulled down my pants and threatened to rape me."

The Islamic Republic has been using field courts to issue summary judgments without due process, in line with official government statements calling protesters “enemies,” “terrorists,” and “spies of foreign enemies,” and promising to immediately review their cases.

According to statistics from the Hengaw Documentation Center, since the beginning of the recent nationwide protests:

• More than 40,000 citizens have been arrested.
• The identities of 2,500 people have been verified.
• Among them are 186 women and 218 children under the age of 18.
• So far, 1,270 dead have been identified, including 125 women and 93 children.

This human rights organization warns that the lack of complete transparency of the judicial system, pressure on families to remain silent, and complete immunity for interrogators and security forces indicate the broader dimensions of the crimes that are still ongoing.

The human rights organization Hengaw, emphasizing the severe deterioration of the mental condition of many of the detainees, has announced that some of them had attempted suicide before contacting the organization, and has called for immediate and safe access to these individuals by independent psychologists.

This report presents a stark picture of the Islamic Republic's machine of repression; a system that has abandoned not only the law but even its own formal frameworks of repression and has resorted to torture, humiliation, and naked confessions as its primary means of survival.