A leaked internal document written by three members of Iran’s security forces revealed that an Iranian female teenager arrested for protesting against the regime was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered.
Iran erupts in outrage as BBC World's report on Nika Shakarami, an icon of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, reveals she was sexually assaulted and murdered by security forces during the nationwide 2022 protests. https://t.co/NrFfM4867y
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) May 1, 2024
BBC World recently published a comprehensive and shocking report titled “Secret document says Iran security forces molested and killed teen protester,” which detailed the circumstances that occurred to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami after she vanished from a protest against the Islamic Republic in 2022, which began after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini under morality police custody after being arrested for “improper hijab.”
A few days later, Shakarami’s lifeless body was found on a street on September 20, 2022. The classified document, verified and corroborated by BBC World after obtaining it from an unnamed source, contradicted the Iranian government’s claims that Shakarami killed herself by jumping off a building and that her death had nothing to do with the protests.
Marked as "Highly Confidential," the leaked papers were reportedly part of a larger 322-page case file on anti-government protesters in 2022, according to a former Iranian intelligence official BBC consulted to verify the document’s authenticity. Despite some inconsistencies BBC found in the file, the former official, who cannot be named or shown for his safety, determined that the paper was mostly genuine.
Containing testimonies from a team of Iranian security officials who arrested and later killed Shakarami, the document allowed the BBC to map Shakarami’s whereabouts before her murder, from her role in leading the protests against the Islamic Republic during a demonstration in Laleh Park to her arrest and her eventual death.
The BBC have uncovered documents about the fate of Nika Shakarami, 16. She was abducted by the Iran Islamic regime's Morality police for not wearing the Hijab. She was tortured, raped & murdered. They had claimed she had jumped off a building.
The reason she was raped was… pic.twitter.com/5IrNZHUJdx— David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) May 1, 2024
The confidential file contained extremely disturbing testimonies from three members of Team 12 who followed and captured Shakarami. After hours of being chased by Iranian security operatives, Nika was spotted and then detained in an unmarked freezer van. She was in the rear compartment with the three Team 12 members named Arash Kalhor, Sadegh Monjazy, and Behrooz Sadeghy. Their team leader, Morteza Jalil, was in the front seat beside the driver.
The report also contained other chilling details, which included one of the men (Sadegh Monjazy) molesting Shakarami by putting his hand inside her trousers. Although Monjazy contradicted this statement made by Kalhor, he did not deny that he felt “aroused” while sitting on top of the teenager.
The three men also said Shakarami “was constantly swearing and chanting,” adding that she continuously swore and shouted while inside the van. She was also provoked by one of the men sitting on top of her and touching her buttocks, which caused her to scratch him and jolt so that he fell over.
This provocation eventually devolved into a brutal murder, where Shakarami was bludgeoned to death by the three men who hit her with batons.
Grief, today, as I reflect on Nika Shakarami's last hours. As reconstructed in agonising detail by the BBC, using classified documents from the IRGC.
In September 2022, sixteen-year-old Nika was protesting in the streets of Tehran when she was seized by regime thugs and thrown… pic.twitter.com/D7lGcz0LAT— Maryam Aslany (@m_aslany) April 30, 2024
"He doesn't know… who [was doing it], but he could hear… the baton hitting the accused [Nika]... 'I started to kick and punch but really didn't know if I was hitting our guys or the accused.'"
After Jalil ordered the driver to pull over and open the rear door, he found Shakarami’s lifeless body inside the compartment. He called a senior IRGC official codenamed Naeem 16 for orders, who told the team to dump her lifeless body on the street.
The BBC reached out to the Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for comment on the report’s allegations. They did not respond.
