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Iran’s judiciary has filed charges against “a number of journalists and activists” after the publication of a BBC report alleging men working for the security forces sexually assaulted and killed a 16-year-old protester.<\/p>\n
The judiciary-run Mizan news agency described the BBC Eye investigation into Nika Shakarami’s death in 2022 as “fake, incorrect and full of mistakes”.<\/p>\n
It did not identify the individuals summoned for allegedly “disrupting the psychological security of society”.<\/p>\n
But two Iranian journalists who had commented on the report online said prosecutors had opened cases against them.<\/p>\n
One of them, Mohammad Parsi, wrote on Twitter\/X that the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office had summoned him for publishing an “article about Nika Shakarami and the details of her murder”.<\/p>\n
The second, Marzieh Mahmoodi, posted that \u201cneither the charges nor the details are known\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi dismissed the findings of the BBC\u2019s investigation as a plot by Iran’s enemies, becoming the first official to comment publicly.<\/p>\n
“Enemies and their media have resorted to false and unreal reports to carry out psychological operations,” he told reporters outside a cabinet meeting, according to state media.<\/p>\n
Mr Vahidi claimed it was “an attempt to divert attention” from the current pro-Palestinian protests in the US as well as Iran\u2019s missile and drone attack on Israel last month.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from BBC News on the statements by Mr Vahidi and the judiciary.<\/p>\n
Nika Shakarami became a symbol of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement that shook the Islamic Republic two years ago.<\/p>\n
The protests erupted in response to the death in custody on 16 September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by morality police in the capital for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”.<\/p>\n
On 20 September 2022, Nika was filmed at a protest in Tehran setting fire to her headscarf, while other protesters chanted “death to the dictator” – a reference to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n
She disappeared that evening after telling a friend that she was being chased by security forces.<\/p>\n
Her family eventually found her body at a mortuary more than a week later. They alleged that she died from blows to the head and rejected claims from officials that she had killed herself by jumping off the roof of a building.<\/p>\n
The BBC Eye investigation, published on Monday, was based on what is understood to be a leaked internal document summarising a hearing on Nika’s case held by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).<\/p>\n
According to the document, the teenager was detained by members of a paramilitary group who had been deployed by the IRGC as an undercover team to monitor protests in Tehran that day.<\/p>\n
The document details a series of events that allegedly happened while Nika was restrained in the back of an unmarked freezer van along with three members of the team. These include:<\/p>\n
One of the men molested her while he was sitting on her<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Despite being handcuffed and restrained, she fought back, kicking and swearing<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
An admission that this provoked the men to beat her to death with batons<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
An IRGC officer ordered the men to dump her body on a street<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The BBC report acknowledges there are numerous fake Iranian official documents in circulation, but says \u201cextensive investigations indicate the papers we obtained do chronicle the teenager’s last movements\u201d.<\/p>\n
The BBC also put the allegations to the IRGC and the Iranian government before publication and they did not respond.<\/p>\n
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