Kurdish prisoner to Khamenei: ‘I was raped by your interrogators’

Kurdish political prisoner Afsana Byazidi has said she was raped while being interrogated at a secret Iranian intelligence detention center and was later tortured and confined to a solitary cell after a letter she wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was leaked.

According to Iran’s Amad News in a report this week, Byazidi, who is currently serving a four-year jail term in Kerman prison, held Khamenei responsible for being raped along with other female prisoners.

Activists leaked the letter she wrote from prison and many opposition websites published it.

Addressing Khamenei, Byazidi wrote: “I am addressing you as a man who presented himself as God’s caliph on earth 38 years ago. You enslaved the Iranian people and minorities under the slogan of Islam and religion. I will not forget the imprisonment, torture and rape that I and others were subjected to. There will come a day when we will hold you and your allies accountable.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei poses for a portrait in a session to deliver his message for the Iranian New Year, Iran, on March 20, 2017. (AP)

Byazidi was arrested in April last year due on charges related to student activism. In another letter published last summer, Byazidi said that although all prisoners in Iran are badly treated, Kurds were treated much worse than others.

“To be Kurdish, then that alone is an unforgivable crime because it automatically makes you an enemy as they don’t view you as an Iranian citizen,” she said.