Iran's parliament speaker has rejected claims that some election
protesters were raped in detention after the disputed re-election of
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iranian state media said
Ali Larijani told parliament Wednesday the rape claims were baseless.
He said an investigation by parliament found "no cases of rape or
sexual abuse in Iran's Kahrizak and Evin prisons," where most of the
protesters were initially detained.
Larijani had called for an
investigation into the sexual abuse claims after defeated presidential
candidate Mehdi Karroubi made the allegations in a letter to powerful
cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Karroubi wrote that women and young boys have suffered severe physical and mental damage from rapes in detention centers.
On
Tuesday, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi repeated her
call for a fresh election in Iran, held under the supervision of the
United Nations. She also asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to
visit Iran to receive a first-hand account of human rights abuses.
Ali Reza Beheshti, an ally of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein
Mousavi, announced this week that 69 people were killed during
post-election protests, a figure he based on reports from victims'
families.
The Iranian government has put the death toll in the protests at about 30.
A
judiciary spokesman, Ali Reza Jamshidi, told reporters that security
forces detained about 4,000 people in the aftermath of the election.
He said 3,700 of the detained were quickly released.
Dozens of
detainees have been tried in mass trials during the past two weeks.
Ebadi said these mass judgments are "show trials" that must be stopped.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
News
