One year in prison for protesting police chief's rape of 15-year-old girl

Elham Ostad was sentenced to one year in prison for protesting a police commander's rape of a 15-year-old girl.

Elham Ostad, an English teacher, had posted a post on Instagram during the nationwide protests of 1401 AH protesting the rape of a 15-year-old Baloch girl. Despite not being present at the protests in Zahedan in response to the incident and only expressing his protest on Instagram, he has been sentenced to prison.

On August 21, 2019 (1402), security forces violently arrested Elham Ostad in the city of Chabahar without any judicial warrant and transferred him to Zahedan Central Prison two days later. He was temporarily released on bail of 200 million Tomans a few days after his imprisonment.

According to reports from human rights activists in Sistan and Baluchestan, "Ebrahim Kuchkazai", the former commander of the Chabahar police force, took a 15-year-old girl from Dashtiari, a district of Chabahar, to his break room at his workplace in September 1401 under the pretext of interrogating her and then raped her. After this issue was published, people in Sistan and Baluchestan began to protest. This protest continued until October and reached its peak, coinciding with Bloody Friday and the repression of the people, in which many people from Baluchestan were killed in this repression.

Now, according to published reports, Branch 2 of the Zahedan Revolutionary Court has sentenced Elham Ostad to one year in prison on charges of "propaganda against the system." In addition, he has been sentenced to a fine in another case on charges of "disturbing public opinion."

The one-year prison sentence for Elham Ostad was issued in protest of the rape of a 15-year-old girl, while some ordinary people who were in prison on charges of rape were sentenced to death and their sentences have been carried out in the past few months. However, after the murder of Mahsa Amini and the start of nationwide protests, many women and girls were raped by elements of the regime, but they had no right to protest. Some of these girls even committed suicide due to psychological trauma after the rape. Justice that has never been implemented in Iranian law.