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.
It’s more that, when the US isn’t directly funding regime overthrows, we tend to take a “We’ll come in with FULL support at the very last moment when we’re certain who’s going to win, so we can curry favor with expense but no risk.”