At the Jerusalem Post, an interview with a Basiji - one of the Iranian People's Militia - after his release from detention for the "crime" of having freed two Iranian teenagers - a 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl - arrested during the post-election disturbances:
"There have been many other police and members of the security forces arrested because they have shown leniency toward the protesters out on the streets, or released them from custody without consulting our superiors," he said.
He pinned the blame for much of the most ruthless violence employed by the Iranian security apparatus against opposition protesters on what he called "imported security forces" - recruits, as young as 14 and 15, he said, who have been brought from small villages into the bigger cities where the protests have been centered.
"Fourteen and 15-year old boys are given so much power, which I am sorry to say they have abused," he said. "These kids do anything they please - forcing people to empty out their wallets, taking whatever they want from stores without paying, and touching young women inappropriately. The girls are so frightened that they remain quiet and let them do what they want."
These youngsters, and other "plainclothes vigilantes," were committing most of the crimes in the names of the regime, he said.
Asked about his own role in the brutal crackdowns on the protesters, whether he had been beaten demonstrators and whether he regretted his actions, he answered evasively.
"I did not attack any of the rioters - and even if I had, it is my duty to follow orders," he began. "I don't have any regrets," he went on, "except for when I worked as a prison guard during my adolescence."
Explaining how he had come to join the volunteer Basiji forces, he said his mother had taken him to them.
When he was 16, "my mother took me to a Basiji station and begged them to take me under their wing because I had no one and nothing foreseeable in my future. My father was martyred during the war in Iraq and she did not want me to get hooked on drugs and become a street thug. I had no choice," he said.
He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."
In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."
"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said.
Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"
"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.
"I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."
This reminds me of an "I, Claudius" episode in which the family of the conniving Sajanus is being murdered, including a very young girl. Even as fiction about Rome, I thought at the time it must have been highly exaggerated:
Guard: "The girl is a virgin. It's unprecedented to kill a virgin. It will bring bad luck to the city."
Macro: "Then make sure she's not a virgin when you kill her. Now GET ON WITH IT."
This is not even medieval stuff. This is something much more primitive and barbarous.
Posted by: Noga | July 20, 2009 at 12:12 PM
It was no fiction. At any rate contemporary historians recorded it; see Tacitus, Annals, book 5, chapter 9. But to have it happening today, and to have people writing in so-called liberal newspapers defending the government that authorizes it!!
Posted by: Alan | July 20, 2009 at 12:56 PM
Those temporary marriages are common in Iran, and they generally aren't associated with executions. They are government licensed whore-houses run by mullahs who are getting rich as pimps. Outside the control of the mullahs, they are, of course, illegal.
On youtube, there are several documentaries showing that highly educated Iranian women work there as paid prostitutes, because women have difficulty getting jobs elsewhere.
Posted by: Dom | July 20, 2009 at 04:45 PM
"religiously-inspired alternative to secular humanism".
Posted by: No Good Boyo | July 20, 2009 at 09:49 PM
An article in Al Jadid magazine, from 2002, provides an explanation:
"A woman's rape is frequently the last act that precedes her execution. This is explained by the rule in Iranian political prisons that the sentence of execution cannot be carried out if the woman is a virgin. Since there is a theological belief that if a woman dies a virgin she will go to heaven, the politically active virgin is forced to "marry" before her execution and thus to insure she will go to hell. She is forced to "marry" the hangman who will carry out her execution.. This marriage is conducted as a legitimate and official contract which includes, among other things, an estimated dowry. This "dowry" is subsequently paid to the family of the victim; it simultaneously becomes the equivalent of an official notification that she was executed."
Consider the perversity of this practice: Not content with deciding her fate in this life, the human judges have to decide her fate in the afterlife.
Do they not trust God to know what he needs to know in making his own judgments?
Posted by: Noga | July 21, 2009 at 12:10 AM
Fuck Islam. One day all the little roaches will have their rights taken away just like they do to these little girls who will never have a chance at life. How hilarious would it be that contrary to their belief that the girls will go to hell after being raped and the men to heaven with a hundred and something virgins, that they just go to hell and the girls are able to direct their suffering from heaven? If just the 'just god' aspect of their religion turns out to be true, then this is not outside the realm of possibilities.
Posted by: Concerned human | December 17, 2009 at 01:44 AM