Price of dissent: Iran cops molested, killed arrested teen, staged it as suicide

Highly confidential documents of an investigation by Iran’s revolutionary guards, accessed by the BBC have revealed that three policemen after arresting 16-year-old Nika Shakarami from an anti-regime protest in 2022, molested and ended up killing her.

Addressed to the IRGC’s commander-in-chief, the classified doccument says it is based on extensive talks with its teams that policed that protest.

It says that one of the policemen sat on handcuffed teenager and touched her inappropriately in the back of a van. Later, she was beaten up with baton and tasers, so much so that she succumbed to death. The accused policemen were also accompanied by a senior who was sitting in front with the driver.

As per the BBC report, Nika before going missing, was seen burning pile of hijabs in the anti-regime protest held on the evening of 20 September near Laleh Park in central Tehran. In the videos, she was seen standing on a dumpster setting fire to hijabs.

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Her lifeless body was found nine days after going missing following which the government claimed she killed herself. To support their claim, the officials had also released a CCTV footage of an apartment buidling in which, they claimed to have identified Nika entering in order to jump off its roof later.

Nika’s mother, however, had rejected the claims of policemen saying she could not “under any circumstances, confirm that person is Nika”.

The sequence

According to the leaked documents, Nika was in the radar of the morality police for her involvement in the anti-regime protests. In fact, she was being watched by policemen of ‘Team 12’ who suspected her “of leadership, due to her unconventional behaviour and repeated calls with her mobile phone”.

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Team 12, consisted four members Arash Kalhor, Sadegh Monjazy, Behrooz Sadeghy, and their leader Morteza Jalil.

The documents suggested that Nika had no clue till the night of protest, that she was being watched and followed.

The document says that apart from Team 12 there were other teams also deployed at the protest to keep an eye on suspects like Nika. Team 12, however, sent one of its operatives into the crowd, posing as a protester, to confirm Nika was indeed one of the demonstration’s leaders. Then, according to the report, he called in his team to arrest her. But she fled.

Her aunt had previously told BBC Persian that Nika rang a friend that night to say she was being chased by security forces.

After an hour or so, she was finally detained and lodged in the team 12’s vehicle - an unmarked freezer van.

Officer Arash Kalhor, Sadegh Monjazy, Behrooz Sadeghy were in the back of the van with Nika and their leader Jalil was in the front with the driver. The report says that the group intially tried to take Nika to two government detention centres but the first one rejected to take her in due to overcrowing and the second denied her entry owing to her ‘swearing and chanting’. The commander reportedly was worried that she could agitate other detainees and ‘cause a riot’, said the classified document.

It said that Morteza Jalil once again contacted his IRGC HQ for advice, says the report, and was told to head to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.

En route, he said he began to hear crashing noises behind him coming from the pitch-dark rear compartment of the van. The investigators said in the report that Jalil indeed knew what he was hearing.

Testimonies of those sitting in the back of the van revealed that Arash Kalhor gagged her mouth with his socks but she started struggling. Then Sadegh [Monjazy] laid her on the chest freezer and sat on her.

Arash Kalhor gave further chilling details, saying he briefly turned on his phone torch and saw Sadegh Monjazy “[has] put his hand inside her trousers”.

Arash Kalhor said after that they lost control.

“He doesn’t know… who (was doing it), but he could hear… the baton hitting the accused (Nika)… ‘I started to kick and punch but really didn’t know if I was hitting our guys or the accused.’”

But Sadegh Monjazy contradicted Arash Kalhor’s statement, which he said was motivated by professional jealousy. He denied putting his hand in her trousers - but said he could not deny that he became “aroused” while sitting on her and touched Nika’s buttocks.

He said this provoked Nika - despite the fact her hands were tied behind her back - to scratch him and jolt so that he fell over.

Later from the van’s cabin, Morteza Jalil ordered the driver to pull over following which they discovered Nika dead. Then, he reportedly called his seniors at IRGC’s headquarters once again to seek advice. But they told him that they can’t taken her officially in the list of protest related deaths.

So, he told Jalil to simply “dump her on the street”. Jalil said they left Nika’s body in a quiet street under Tehran’s Yadegar-e-Emam highway.

Her family found her body in a mortuary more than a week after with severe blunt injuries on her face and head. As reported, Iran’s authorities denied Nika’s death was connected to the demonstration and, after conducting their own investigation, said that she had died by suicide.

Nika’s disappearance and death were widely reported by global media and her picture just lke Mahsa Amini’s became an icon for the women’s struggles and morality policing in Iran.

The classified report concludes that a sexual assault caused the fight in the rear compartment of the van, and that strikes from Team 12 had caused Nika’s death. “Three batons and three Tasers were all used. It is not clear which one of the blows was the fatal one,” it says.

The UN fact-finding mission have reported that up to 551 demonstrators were killed by security forces during Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement, with the majority dying from gunshot.

After a few months, the demonstrations died down as a result of the brutal security force crackdown. The morality police in Iran then took a break, but earlier this month they started a fresh campaign against those who disobeyed the Islamic clothing code.

Aida, the elder sister of Nika, is one of the people who has been detained recently.