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Iran protests: Family finds signs of torture on man’s exhumed body
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The body of a young protester who died in custody in Iran showed shocking signs of torture after it was exhumed, his family says, in the first such case since the anti-government unrest began.
Hamed Salahshoor, a 23-yearold taxi driver, was arrested near Izeh on 26 November, his cousins told BBC Persian.
Four days later, they said, security forces told his father he was dead and made him declare he had a heart attack.
But his body showed the signs of severe head injuries and surgery, they added.
“His face was smashed. His nose, jaw and chins were broken. His torso from his neck to his navel, and over his kidneys, was stitched up.”
Hamed Salahshoor’s cousins said he had taken part in the protests that began in September following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”.
However, they said, his family had not been told why he was detained.
“A few hours before his arrest, Hamed received the good news that he had got a job at the ministry of oil,” a source close to the family told BBC Persian.
He then called his mother and told her that he had “finally found a good job”, the source added.
Salahshoor later picked up passengers in his taxi in the southern city of Isfahan and began the 185km (115-mile) journey to Izeh.
He never made it home because his taxi was stopped at a checkpoint near Izeh and he was taken into custody.
Salahshoor’s cousins said his father was informed on 30 November that he had died, and that he was forced to sign a document saying that he had suffered a heart attack. He also had to promise not to hold a public funeral.
“Security forces threatened Hamed’s father that they would kill his two other sons,” the family source alleged.
Security personnel buried Salahshoor’s body at night-time in a village 30km (18 miles) from Izeh, with only his parents allowed to be present, according to the cousins.
The next day, his family exhumed the body so that they could bury him in Izeh.
In addition to finding the evidence that he had been tortured and undergone a surgical procedure, they found signs that he not been given a proper Muslim burial, which requires the naked body of the deceased to be washed and shrouded in cloth.
“They buried Hamed with his clothes and shoes on. His body was not straight. And they claim they are Muslims!” his cousins said, referring to Iran’s Shia Muslim clerical establishment.
So far, at least 502 protesters have been killed and 18,450 others have been arrested during the current unrest, according to the Human Rights Activists’ News Agency (HRANA).
Many of those detained have reportedly been subjected to enforced disappearance, incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment.
Yalda Aghafazli, 19, alleged before her death that she was severely beaten in police custody.
“I’d never been beaten this much in the 19 years of my life, but to the last minute I did not express remorse and I did not cry,” she said in an audio message that she sent to her a friend following her release.
“40 security forces attacked me for my arrest,” #Yalda_AghaFazli says in an audio file obtained by BBC Persian.
The 19 year-old protester said she was tortured in detention. She was found dead in her bed 5 days after her release.pic.twitter. com/VWY8us41SC — Parham Ghobadi (@ BBCParham) November 16, 2022
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Aghafazli was arrested on 26 October in Tehran for allegedly writing anti-establishment slogans on a wall and held for 13 days.
Five days after her release from prison she was found dead in her bed.
The judiciary said she had died of a drug overdose. But
Hamed Salahshoor’s body showed the signs of severe head injuries and surgery, his family says
Some survivors of the warship’s sinking were found after hours at sea
a source close to her family disputed the claim, saying that they had been told that the result of a toxicology test would take three months to arrive.
“The police officers who searched her room said nothing was found and the post-mortem report gave the cause of death as ‘unknown’,” the source told BBC Persian.
Arshia Emamgholizadeh, 16, took his own life six days after he was released from prison in late November.
A source close to his family told BBC Persian that he was “given pills in prison and was beaten”, while his mother was filmed saying at his grave: “You were not suicidal, what did they do to you in prison?”
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, one of the protesters sentenced to death after what human rights groups have denounced as sham trials, has also been tortured in prison, according to his lawyer.
“He was beaten while tied up and blindfolded, he was tasered and beaten in the soles of his feet with a metal rod,” Ali Sharifzadeh Ardakani said on Monday.
Hosseini was found guilty of the charge of “corruption on Earth” earlier this month in a case related to the killing of a member of the paramilitary Basij Resistance Force in the city of Karaj, near Tehran, on 3 November.
Hosseini has alleged that he was tortured into confessing by security forces before his trial. Mr Ardakani was also denied access to his client.
Thai navy ship sinking: Rescuers find bodies of five sailors
Rescuers have recovered the bodies of five crew members from a Thai warship that sank off the country’s south-east coast, the navy has said.
The dead sailors were found on Tuesday along with a survivor, all wearing life vests, 60km (37 miles) south of where the vessel went down on Sunday night.
A search is continuing for 24 sailors still missing. The navy says 76 crew members have been rescued in total.
HTMS Sukhothai went down carrying 105 crew, after losing power in a storm.
The Thai navy and air force have spent two days searching for survivors, with hundreds of officers on four navy ships as well as several helicopters deployed to scan a 50-sq-km (30-sqmile) area in the Gulf of Thailand.
“The latest person was found 41 hours from when the ship sank and he was alive. So we believe that there are those still alive out there... we will continue to search,” said Admiral Chonlathis Navanugraha, the navy’s chief of staff.
A naval commander had earlier suggested search crews had only a twoday window to find anyone alive, given the time they had spent in the ocean.
Several sailors have already been found, exhausted and unconscious in some cases. Not all of those missing are wearing life vests.
“We found this guy holding a life buoy... he was floating in the water for 10 hours,” Captain Krapich KoraweePaparwit of the HTMS Kraburi told Reuters.
He added that the man, still conscious, had a minor head wound and “sore eyes as he was exposed to sea water.”
Other sailors were found in a life raft after they jumped from the sinking vessel. Pictures and footage shared by the navy on Twitter show survivors wrapped in blankets and being taken to hospital.
Navy officials initially said 106 people were on board the ship, but revised that number to 105 on Tuesday.
The HTMS Sukhothai, a 76m-long corvette, had been on day two of a routine patrol when it went down. The navy said water flooded its hull and then the electricity room, cutting the power.
Dramatic pictures posted on the navy’s Twitter account show the vessel listing onto its starboard side, before it went under around 23:30 local time (16:30 GMT) on Sunday.
Other naval ships were immediately alerted and sent to assist, but only the HTMS Kraburi frigate reached the boat before it sank, about 32km (20 miles) east of Bang Saphan in Prachuap Khiri Khan province.
It is not yet known what caused the ship to flood, and why sailors were forced to jump into the water.
The Thai navy said this was the first time it had lost a vessel in such circumstances, and it would launch an investigation.
However, naval experts have questioned how such a disaster struck a ship on a routine patrol.
“It’s really unusual,” said naval law expert David Letts, an associate professor at the Australian National University.
He noted there were measures to prevent flooding affecting central units like the engine room.
The fact the disaster struck at night meant it was probable many sailors would have been asleep at the time, and the chaotic situation might have upended protocols like getting crew to upper decks or releasing life rafts.
The warship had been commissioned in 1987 and built in the United States by a local shipbuilding company, said the US Naval Institute. Source: BBC
