OfGreta Privitera
Captured by Iranian Guards during protests over the death of Mahsa Amini and reappeared ten days later in a Tehran morgue. A “confidential document” obtained by the BBC denies the version of the Tehran regime
He knew it, but reading it is another thing. “I’m devastated,” she tells al Courier Nasrin Shakarami, mother of Nika. Devastated by the confirmation that before being killed, her daughter was molested. Nika is Nika Shakarami, 16, taken by the Guards of the Iranian regime on 20 September 2022, disappeared for ten days and reappeared, lifeless, in a morgue of Tehran.
“She committed suicide, she jumped from a building,” the authorities told the family, but no one ever believed it. “My daughter is a fighter, I knew that she would fight to the end against the regime guards and that she would never allow herself to be touched.” And she imagined that they, the ayatollahs’ men, would make her pay.
The “confidential” document with the names of the agents
It’s been six months since the journalists of the BBC they analyze line by line a “highly confidential” document in which there are writings names and surnames of the agents who loaded her alive into a van on that autumn day and brought her out dead. Names also confirmed by our sources.
Nika Shakarami as Mahsa Amini
Saying Nika Shakarami, in Iran, is like saying Mahsa Amini. As soon as the protests broke out after the killing of Amini, the video went viral in which the sixteen-year-old from Khorramabad, standing on a dumpster, stretched her arm towards the sky, while she clutched a burning veil. While around, the comrades in the resistance shout “death to the dictator”.
The last message to the girl he loved
The guards, we read in the document, think that this teenager with black hair and eyes – who wears baggy clothes, so shamelessly courageous – could be one of the leader of the protests. They try to catch her, but she runs away. In that hour that passes before the arrest, Nika hears Nele, a German friend – the girl she loves – on the phone and tells her “They’re looking for me, take care of yourself”.
The arrest and the violence
They find it. They load her into the car. They are the agents of Squad 12. Behind, with her, are the guards Arash Kalhor, Sadegh Monjazy and Behrooz Sadeghy. In front, team leader Morteza Jalil. Detention centers and police headquarters reject the request to take her in: there are no more places. On those days the cells are full, crowded with hundreds of girls and boys protesting against the dictatorship – in a few months they kill 551 of them.
In the report of BBC we read that a guard, Sadeghy, says that in the truck Nika screams and struggles: «Arash Kalhor gagged her mouth with his socks but she started struggling. Then Monjazy sat on top of her. I don’t know what happened, but after a few minutes she started swearing. I couldn’t see anything, I only heard fighting and blows.” Kalhor explains that he turned on the phone’s flashlight and saw Monjazy “put his hand in her trousers”. Then they lose control. “I don’t know who was doing it, but I could hear the truncheon hitting the accused. I started kicking and punching but in reality I didn’t know if I was hitting our boys or Nika.”
Monjazy denies Kalhor’s claims. He says he didn’t put his hand down her pants, but he admits that he got “excited” while he was sitting on her and touching her butt.
Killed by the beatings and beatings of the officers
With my hands tied behind my back, Nika scratches, wriggles, defends himself to the end. The foreman orders the driver to pull over. He opens the back door and sees that Nika is dead, that she was killed by the beatings, kicks and punches of three men, his agents. He wipes the blood from her head “which was not in good condition”. At that point, they abandon the tortured body on the side of the road and begin the farce.
The arrest of the sister
Fast forward a year and a half later.
Two weeks ago, the moral police arrested her sister, Aida Shakarami, in Tehran for not wearing the veil. Aida is released on bail, and now – the family says – the girl has been forbidden to leave the house, to use her cell phone.Just outside the prison, Aida took a photo of herself: there she is holding a bouquet of flowers in her arms, smiling and with her head uncovered. Just like that of beloved sister Nika.
April 30, 2024 (modified April 30, 2024 | 8:04 pm)
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
