Child detainees in Iran tortured brutally, says Amnesty

Iranian security officials tortured minors arrested during the country's anti-regime demonstrations, an Amnesty International report released on Thursday stated.

Some minors subjected to violence — including beatings, electric shocks, and rape — were as young as 12 years of age, the rights organization reported.

Extreme measures to intimidate

"It is abhorrent that officials have wielded such power in a criminal manner over vulnerable and frightened children, inflicting severe pain and anguish upon them and their families and leaving them with severe physical and mental scars," stated Diana Eltahawy, an Amnesty official.

The security forces also used psychological torture, such as death threats, to intimidate and compel minors to make forced "confessions."

According to Amnesty International, a survivor told his relative: "They [state agents] gave us electric shocks, hit me in my face with the back of a gun."

"They threatened that if we told anyone, they would [detain us again], do even worse, and deliver our corpses to our families," the survivor added.

Another survivor's mother told Amnesty that her son was forced to confess because they raped him with a hose pipe.

The conditions in which the children and youth were held captive were also inhumane, the report said. There was limited access to food, water, and toilets, as well as overcrowding, prolonged solitary confinement, and exposure to extreme cold conditions.

Calls for international action

Amnesty took into account the testimonies of the survivors and their relatives for their report. They also urged the release of the imprisoned children and for international action against the Iranian authorities responsible for the violence.

"As there is no prospect of effective, impartial investigations into the torture of children in Iran, we call on all states, as well as the German government, to exercise universal jurisdiction over Iranian officials," said Dieter Karg, an Iran expert at Amnesty.

The Iranian government pardoned around 22,000 detained protestors a few days earlier. The majority of them are believed to have been released, buthave not yet been accounted for in terms of official numbers.

aa/rc  (Amnesty International, dpa)