Ali Yektaie a teenager arrested during the November Iran protests has remained in prison because of the high cost of his bail.
Ali Yektaie was arrested by plainclothes agents at his work place in November for joining the nationwide protests in Tehran’s Nasim Shahr. He has been held in a juvenile detention center in Tehran’s Shahreziba district.
Bail was set at 600 million tomans to secure his release but his family can not afford it and they are desperately struggling to raise the cash.
Reports indicate that at least 12,000 Iranians were detained during and after nationwide protests that erupted over increased gasoline prices in November.
According to Amnesty International children as young as 15 have been detained alongside adults, including in Fashafouyeh prison, Tehran province, which is notorious for torture and other ill-treatment.
Several accounts from prisons across the country have shed light on the brutal use of torture against detained protesters by the regime including the sexual abuse of minors.
In a shocking report, Kurdistan Human Rights Network recently said that the minors who were arrested by Iranian security forces during the protests were tortured and sexually abused while in prison in the western city of Marivan.
According to two sources in Marivan, a large number of minors were detained on November 16 and 17 in the city. They were transferred to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Detention Center located in an IRGC base in Sepah Square. The minors were subjected to severe torture along with hundreds of other detainees for several days.
The IRGC Intelligence interrogators, headed by a person identified as Haji Meisam, threatened at least three minors to rape with objects such as batons while sexually abusing them. The three minors were released a few days later on bail and were threatened by their interrogators to stay silent about the tortures.
According to the source, the families of the minors were informed of the abuse and even the probability of rape after witnessing their children’s psychological problems. They have refrained from filing charges in fear of a reaction by the IRGC. The children are still not willing to detail their ordeal.
At least 1,500 citizens were killed during Iran’s nationwide protests that erupted in November over gasoline prices. Over 12,000 others were detained across the country.
