An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran’s security forces, according to a leaked document understood to have been written by those forces.
Nika Shakarami (16) vanished from an anti-regime protest in 2022. Her body was found nine days later, and the government claimed she killed herself.
The BBC investigated a report marked ‘Highly Confidential’ summarising a hearing on Shakarami’s death. It names her alleged killers and the senior commanders involved.
Shakarami’s disappearance and death were widely reported. Her picture became synonymous with the protests sparked just days earlier by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Shakarami was standing on a dumpster setting fire to hijabs at a protest. Suspecting her of being a protest leader, an undercover security unit eventually caught her and put in the unit’s unmarked freezer van.
She was gagged, but struggled. One captor laid her on a chest freezer and sat on her. According to a second captor, he ‘put his hand inside her trousers’. He then heard ‘the baton hitting the accused…’
The first captor contradicted this version; he denied putting his hand in her trousers, but said he became ‘aroused’ and touched her buttocks.
Although her hands were tied behind her back, the first captor said that she scratched him and jolted causing him to fall off.
Due to the noise, the unit leader ordered the driver to stop, and he discovered Shakarami’s body, which was later dumped in a quiet street under a highway.
When Shakarami’s mother eventually found her in a mortuary, her death certificate stated she was killed by ‘multiple injuries caused by blows with a hard object’ – three batons and three Tasers.
Shakarami’s elder sister, Aida, was arrested in the recent crackdown on breaches of the Islamic dress code.
[Image: Social Media – Nika with her sister Aida (R)]