An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran’s security forces, a leaked document understood to have been written by those forces says.
It has let us map what happened to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami who vanished from an anti-regime protest in 2022.
Her body was found nine days later. The government claimed she killed herself.
We put the report’s allegations to Iran’s government and its Revolutionary Guards. They did not respond.
Marked “Highly Confidential”, the report summarises a hearing on Nika’s case held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - the security force that defends the country’s Islamic establishment. It includes what it says are the names of her killers and the senior commanders who tried to hide the truth.
US intervenes: “this is imperialism! The US only wants Iranian oil. They don’t care about brown people”
US does not intervene: “the US doesn’t care about brown people!”
It’s more tricky given that US (and UK) intervention is how we got here.
The UK (and US - in that order) were directly responsible for the overthrow of Mossadegh’s government and the resulting ~25 years of repression by the Shah, but while the resulting fall of the Shah was inevitable, the Islamic Revolution was not. It came on a knife’s edge.