Students beaten, tortured, raped and killed in Iran – Statement of surviving students arrested in Tehran University Dormitory

Hands Off the People of Iran received this a couple of hours ago, it details some disturbing acts of violence committed by the security forces. The following statement is written by 4 of the Tehran university students who were arrested in Tehran university dormitory on Sunday night, when Basij, Sepah, and the anti rebellion guard attacked Kuieh Daneshgaheh Tehran ( the dormitory of Tehran university). These were the students who were asleep in their rooms or studying in the library and their only fault (according to the regime) was being a student of Tehran university and living in the dormitory. Many of the students who were a part of the demonstrations are still in prison and up to 15 students have been killed and there bodies have been taken away by Basij.

The students who wrote this text were picked randomly by the savage unnamed forces and were taken to the basement of the interior ministry:

‘A night in the 4th  underground floor of the interior ministry:

“ Here is a hundred times worse than  the Guantanamo”

We are a group of 46 students who had been arrested in our rooms or in the common rooms, they put us all on a bus and put blindfolds over our eyes, there was a metal cover over our heads –on the top of the seats that the Basijis kept hitting on it with clubs all the way which made a very horrible sound and was the worse kind of white torture (mental torture) for us in that time.

After a while we felt the bus is going downwards and later from the whispers of the officers and Basijis and Sepahis in plainclothes we found out that we are in the basement of the interior ministry. The basement was about 100 square meters large and its ground was covered with smoking ash, after we entered they made us lay down on the hot ash and roll around, we had to watch but were not allowed to touch the person next to us while rolling, if it happened they would start to hit us with clubs and kick us, all the time they kept saying: “so you wanted to have a revolution, did you?” They used sexual swearing words and a abusive language all the time. There were about 20 soldiers, guards of Basij and Sepah for the 46 of us.

Next they would keep making us to stare at the floor and the ceiling after we stared at the floor for a few minutes they would start hitting us very severely and saying: “why aren’t you looking at the floor?” although we were all looking at the floor. And all night long we could here a sound as if some workers were smashing bricks outside which made us all very nervous.

What they did to the students who wanted to use the bathrooms was very savage and inhuman like the W.C had no door or cover and anyone who used it would be seen by the guards and anyone who went there had only 30 seconds to use the bathroom after 30 seconds they would pull us out of the bathroom even before we had pulled up our pants.

One of the students was injured in his eye, he told the guard who was standing next to him that his eye hurt so much and he could not see properly, they didn’t even give him a small bandage to put on his eye but they started to punch him in his face. Another student had a broken leg and he couldn’t move but they did not stop hitting him.

They did not even let us drink water after all that they made us go through, the one time that they gave us water they made us look up and keep our mouths open and they purred water from one meter above us! When one of their leaders came in to check us he asked them: “did you give them water?” and he looked around and saw the student with the broken leg he said: “why is he dying then? Give them water” They brought in a plastic pipe and we thought they are really going to give us water and we were so thirsty that we ran towards it but what came out of it was boiling water which made our lips and mouths burn.

The food was also a part of the torture they put some cold macaroon on our palms and said: you must eat it. Even if we dropped one noodle they made us pick it up from the floor that was covered with ash and blood and eat it, anyone who disobeyed would be hit in the head till he passed out. The same thing happened over the so called breakfast they gave us a piece of dry bread and told us to divide it in half with the person next to us and since the bread was dry little pieces would fall on the floor and we would be beaten. Another thing that is very painful for us to talk about and go to the details is the sexual abuse and rape that happened to us in the 4th  underground level of the interior ministry. The same thing happened to most of us after we were sent to the security police a few hours before we were released.

The one day we spent in the basement of the interior ministry was the worst day of our lives, a day we will never forget. When they first took us there some of the guards said: here is a thousand times worse than Guantanamo. And they were right we will never forget what we went through just because we lived in the dormitory of Tehran University, there were moments when we thought we are going to stay here forever and no one will ever help us. When they had gathered us to move us to the security police one of the students started to cry and then we all started crying.

When the security police was about to release us Dr. Farhad Rahbar the dean of Tehran university showed up at last! He was with one of the parliament members and some photographers who were taking pictures of his bravery. He gave us each a T-shirt as a present. They made us wear them so no one would see our bloody shirts, what we all thought of was: where were you on the night they illegally attacked the dormitory? Why didn’t you defend us? Why did you leave us on our own, with no protection so they could do what ever they felt like to? Why did you let our classmates to die innocently in the libraries of the dormitory? Why did say nothing when the dormitories turned all red of our blood? No Dr Rahbar, sir, we do not want T-shirts to cover up our blood and their filth we want you to answer, we want you to go and see the basement of  the interior ministry, we want you to make them answer for what they did because we are not going to keep quiet anymore we are going to make them answer for what they did and if you keep quiet, the blood of our classmates is going to be on your hands just as well as them.’

This is what some ordinary students of Tehran university went through 2 days ago, it is not hard to imagine what is happening to the activist students who were arrested.  As the students who wrote the above text said anyone who keeps quiet and does not protest against what is going on in Iran right now is just as responsible as the Islamic regime of Iran who is killing people now  in the street the universities and in prisons to prolong its pathetic existence which is built on the blood of Iranian people.