- Written by Bertram Hill, Ida Miller, Michael Simkin
- BBC eye survey
An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and murdered by three men working for Iranian security forces, according to leaked documents purported to have been prepared by Iranian security forces.
This allowed us to map what happened to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, who disappeared from an anti-regime protest in 2022.
Her body was discovered nine days later. The government claimed she committed suicide.
We have presented the report's allegations to the Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guards. they didn't respond.
The report, marked “confidential,” summarizes public hearings into Nika's case held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the security force that protects the country's Islamic regime. It lists the names of her killers and the senior commanders who tried to cover up the truth about her.
It contains disturbing details about what happened in the back of the masked van where security forces were holding Nika. These include:
- One of the men sexually abused her while sitting on top of her
- Despite being handcuffed and restrained, she fought back by kicking and cursing.
- She admitted this prompted the men to hit her with batons.
With so many fake official Iranian documents in circulation, the BBC spent months verifying every detail using multiple sources.
Our extensive investigation has shown that the documents we have obtained record the last actions of this teenage boy.
Nika Shakarami's disappearance and death were widely reported, and her photo became synonymous with Iranian women's struggle for greater freedom. As street protests spread across Iran in the fall of 2022, crowds shouted her name, furious at the country's strict rules on mandatory veiling. [hijab].
In Nika's case, her family found her body in a morgue more than a week after she disappeared from a protest. However, Iranian authorities denied that Nika's death was related to the demonstrations, and after conducting their own investigation, announced that Nika had died by suicide.
People around her chanted “Death to the dictator” in reference to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
What she had no way of knowing at the time, a confidential report reveals, was that she was being watched.
In a letter to the Revolutionary Guards' top commander, it said it was based on extensive consultations with the forces that cracked down on the protests.
Several secret security forces that were monitoring the demonstration begin to explain the documents.
One of them, Team 12, said it suspected the teenager lacked leadership skills due to his “unconventional behavior and repeated calls on his cell phone.”
The team sent one of their operatives into the crowd posing as a protester to confirm that Nika was indeed one of the leaders of the demonstration. He then called in a team to arrest her, according to her report. But she ran away.
Her aunt previously told BBC Persian that Nika called a friend that night and told him she was being chased by security forces.
Almost an hour passed before she was found again, at which time she was taken into custody and placed in the team's vehicle, an unmarked refrigerated van, the report said.
Nika was in the rear compartment with three members of Team 12: Arash Kalhor, Sadegh Monjazy and Behrouz Sadeghi.
Team leader Morteza Jalil took the lead with the drivers.
The group then tried to find a place to take her, the report states.
They attempted a temporary police camp nearby, but were turned away because it was too crowded.
So they drove 35 minutes to the detention center, where the warden initially agreed to admit Nika. But then he changed his mind.
“The accused [Nika] He was constantly swearing and chanting,” he told investigators in the report.
“There were 14 other female detainees in the station at the time, and my understanding was that she could potentially upset the other female detainees.
“I was worried she would start a riot.”
According to the report, Morteza Jalil again sought advice from Revolutionary Guard headquarters and was told to go to Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
Along the way, he said he started hearing crashes behind him coming from the back compartment of the pitch-black van.
The documents contain testimonies from the men who were guarding Nika in the rear, giving us an idea of what he was hearing.
One of them, Behrouz Sadeghi, said Nika was turned away by the detention center and as soon as she was returned to the van, she began cursing and screaming.
“Arash Kalhor gagged her mouth with a sock, but she began to struggle. Then Sadegh [Monjazy] I laid her down on the chest freezer and had her sit on it. “The situation has calmed down,” he told investigators.
“I don't know what happened, but after a few minutes she started swearing. I couldn't see anything, all I could hear was fighting and punches.”
But Arash Kalhor revealed even more chilling details.
He says he briefly turned on the flashlight on his phone and saw Sadegh Monjazy. ”[has] I put my hand inside her pants. ”
Arash Kalhor said he then lost control.
“He doesn’t know…who he is. [was doing it]but he heard…the sound of the baton hitting the defendant. [Nika]… “I started kicking and punching and I really didn't know if I was hitting my buddy or the defendant.”
However, Sadegh Monjaj refuted Arash Kalhor's statement and said his motive was professional jealousy. Although he denied putting his hand in Nika's pants, he said he could not deny that while he was sitting on her he became “excited” and touched her buttocks.
This caused Nika to scratch herself even though her hands were tied behind her back, causing her to fall due to the impact.
“She kicked me in the face and I had to defend myself.”
From the passenger compartment of the van, Morteza Jalil instructed the driver to pull over.
He opened the back door and discovered Nika's body.
He said he removed blood from her face and head as she was “not in good condition”.
This follows the circumstances in which Nika's mother said she eventually found her daughter in the mortuary and Nika's death certificate, obtained by BBC Persian in October 2022, showed “multiple wounds from blows with hard objects.” This reflects the circumstances in which he was listed as having died.
Team leader Morteza Jalil admitted he had not tried to figure out what happened.
“I was just thinking about how to transport her, and I didn't ask anyone any questions. All I asked was, 'Is she breathing?' I think it was Behrouz Sadeghi who answered, “No, she is dead.'' ”
Ahead of his murder, Jalil called the Revolutionary Guards headquarters for the third time.
On this occasion, he spoke to a senior officer codenamed Naeem 16.
“There have already been deaths in our station and we didn't want that number to rise to 20,” Naeem, 16, told investigators. “She wouldn't have solved her problems by taking her to her base.”
He told Jalil to “throw her out on the street.” Jalil said he left Nika's body in a quiet street under Tehran's Yadegar-Emam highway.
The report concluded that the sexual assault led to a fight in the back compartment of the van and that Team 12's attack caused Nika's death.
“All three batons and three Tasers were used. It is unclear which blow was fatal,” the report states.
The report contradicts the government's explanation of what happened to Nika. Almost a month after the funeral, state television broadcast the results of an official investigation that found Nika died by jumping from a building.
CCTV footage showed a person claiming to be Nika entering the apartment, but Nika's mother told BBC Farsi in a telephone interview: “Under no circumstances should we know that the person is Nika.'' I can't confirm that.”
Nasrin Shakarami later spoke in a BBC documentary discussing authorities' claims about the deaths of protesters, saying: “We all know they are lying.”
The BBC Eye investigation focused not only on the contents of the report, but also on whether it could be trusted as an artifact.
In some cases, what appears to be official Iranian documents or other materials circulating on the internet turns out to be forged.
However, most of these forged documents are easy to spot, as they clearly deviate from official formatting, include incorrect spacing and letter headings, and contain significant grammatical and spelling errors. can do.
For example, it may contain an incorrect official slogan or logo for the year of its origin, or an anachronistic title for a government agency or department.
Another indicator is language that does not conform to the very specific style that tends to be used in Iranian public institutions.
The documents on which we focused our investigation contained several such discrepancies. For example, the “Naja'' police force cited in the report was known at the time as “Farah.''
Therefore, to further test the authenticity of the document, we passed it on to a former Iranian intelligence officer who has seen hundreds of legitimate documents.
Using the official code issued daily to senior Iranian intelligence officers, he called the Revolutionary Guards' archives to find out whether the case file purported to contain this report really existed. I then confirmed the contents.
He received confirmation that this is the case and that the report number shows it is part of a 322-page case file on 2022 anti-government protesters.
I can't be 100% sure, but this gave me confidence that it was real.
His unique access to the IRGC also helped solve another mystery: the identity of Naeem 16, the man who instructed the team to dump Nika's body.
The former intelligence agent did this by making another phone call, this time to someone within Iran's military establishment. He was told that Naeem 16 was the call sign of Captain Mohammad Zamani, who served in the Revolutionary Guards.
His name is listed as one of those present at the five-hour public hearing into Nika's death that the report summarizes.
We have submitted this complaint to the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian government. they didn't respond.
As far as we know, the men responsible for Nika's death were not punished.
The clue as to why this is so is in the document itself. All Team 12 present at the hearing are listed in the report, with the group they belong to, Hezbollah, listed to the right of their names.
This refers to the Iranian paramilitary group Hezbollah, which is not related to the Lebanese group of the same name. Its members are used by the IRGC but, as the report acknowledges, sometimes operate outside its jurisdiction.
“As the above-mentioned individuals belonged to Hezbollah forces, it was not possible to pursue this case without obtaining the necessary commitments and security guarantees,” the report said.
Meanwhile, Naeem, 16, an employee of the Revolutionary Guards, has been given a written reprimand, it added.
A total of 551 protesters were killed by security forces during the Women, Life and Freedom movement in Iran, most of them by gunfire, according to a UN fact-finding mission.
The protests subsided after several months following a bloody crackdown by security forces. After that, there was a lull in the activities of Iran's moral police, but a new crackdown on violations of Islamic dress codes began earlier this month.