Since protests started over Mahsa Amini,
's death,
Iran's regime has unleashed
a campaign of repression.
Eyewitnesses
tell CNN that sexual violence
is being used
to suppress,
demoralize and in some cases
blackmail protesters.
CNN's Nima
Elbagir has this exclusive report.
But we want to warn you
the report contains
details of sexual violence
Over these mountains is Iran,
a regime that has succeeded
in cutting many of its people
off from the outside world.
But disturbing stories
detailing the authorities
brutal retribution,
systematic sexual violence
against anti-regime
protesters have begun leaking out
We've come here
to the Kurdish region of Iraq
to try and find out more.
This is Hannah, not her real name.
A Kurdish
Iranian woman
recently smuggled out of Iran.
She fears for her life
after
taking off and burning
her headscarf on the streets.
She was arrested
and detained
by Iranian intelligence officers.
They choose
the women who are pretty
and suited their appetites.
Then the officer
would take one of them
from the cell to a smaller private room.
They would sexually assault them there.
Hannah isn't only an eyewitness.
She also was violated
I feel shy talking about this.
You can still see what the policeman did.
Look here on my neck.
It's purplish.
That is why I'm covering it.
He forced himself on me.
Then a fight
broke out with another protester
drawing away Hannah's attacker.
Hannah and others could hear screams,
and they believe
a woman was raped
in an interrogation room.
Hannah sketched out the police station
as she remembers it.
She estimates
70 to 80 men
and women were together in a main hall
that accessed
four private interrogation rooms.
It was in these interrogation room.
She says, that she was assaulted
and others were raped.
CNN was able to locate the police station
through Hannah's description
eyewitness corroboration
and geolocation using key landmarks
It's in the Islamabad neighborhood
of Urmia.
Based on this testimony
and speaking to a number of sources,
a pattern of repression comes into focus.
Police centers used as filtration points,
moving protesters
from one location to another.
Often, families
left not knowing
where their loved ones are held.
One Iraq based Kurdish
militant opposition
party PAC identified over 240 people
who they believe
are missing
within this maze of detention centers.
Human rights
organizations
believe the number is higher
in the thousands.
Some of the victims as young as 14.
Many are men
supporting female protesters.
Their punishment as severe as the women's
rescuers.
They brought four
men over
who'd been beaten, screaming
intensely in another cell.
And one of the men who was tortured
sent to the waiting room
where I was
I asked him
what all that screaming was about.
He said they are raped in the men
based on witness testimony.
CNN traced the location
to an Iranian army
intelligence headquarters
voiced here by a translator.
A 17 year
old boy sent
CNN a voice note
following his imprisonment.
We are withholding his name
and location for his safety.
When a security guard heard me
discussing the rape of the other inmates.
He started torturing me all over again.
They tortured, raped me from behind.
Even as authorities visited
sexual violence on protesters,
regime figures accused
female protesters
of prostitution
of, quote, wanting to be naked.
Of the incidents of sexual violence
against protesters
inside Iranian detention facilities.
Most occurred
in the Kurdish
majority areas to the west of Iran, home
to a historically oppressed minority.
Disturbingly, in some cases,
the rapes were filmed
and used to blackmail protesters
into silence.
There has been a real escalation
where female protesters
are, as you can see here,
being openly assaulted, often sexually
But the violence against women
like the protests,
are not confined to the Kurdish areas.
They are often focused on locations
where the protests are most intense.
Like here in the capital, Tehran.
Well, do Samer, have you seen during
one of these stories?
Is Amitabh Aziz
a typical 20 year old on social media,
sharing her love of animals and not less?
I write about it
in social media posts
appearing under her name.
Abasi,
like many young women in Iran, criticized
the regime openly
after the protests began.
Unlike most,
she did it without anonymity.
It didn't take long for security forces
to find and arrest her.
Abasi disappeared
soon after whistleblowers began
to post on various
social media platforms, medics sharing
eyewitness accounts
of what had been done to Abasi.
First of all,
they say
there were a few plainclothes
men with her,
and they did not let her
out of their sight,
even during
a private medical examination.
They were that she was my patient
I went to her bedside.
They had shaved her hair.
She was scared and was trembling.
When she first came in, they said it was
rectal bleeding due to repeated rape.
The plainclothes
men insisted that the doctor write
that the rape was from prior
to her arrest,
and then after this issue was becoming
obvious to all
They changed
the entire scenario altogether.
The details of these leaks were confirmed
to CNN by an insider at Imam
Ali Hospital,
where Abasi was brought to be examined.
In a statement,
the government said
Abasi was treated for digestive problems.
The medics who treated her
said that was not true.
The Iranian regime denies the rape,
accusing her of leading process
an allegation
which could see her
face the death penalty
at this
usually busy border crossing
between Iraq and Iran,
it is deceptively quiet,
those who can cross.
Tell us
the noose is tightening on protesters.
Authorities have for decades
used sexual torture
against Iranians,
and it appears once more
a familiar pattern
sexual violence deployed to enforce
an assertion of moral guardianship
Bianca,
we have reached out
to Iranian authorities
and they have not responded
to our requests for comment.
But for many of those that we're speaking
to, their actions
specifically over the last few days
speak louder
really than any of their words could.
They are engaged
in a continued
horrifying, militarized escalation
in the Kurdish majority regions
to the west
where we tracked many of those rapes to.
They also are
engaged in an attempt
to blackout communication even further.
What is really extraordinary,
not only about the bravery of those men
and women
who were able to send us
voice notes,
who are able
to get their stories
and their voices out to us
and to the rest of the world
is that they did this in the face
of an increasing escalation of
of an increasing attempt
by Iranian authorities
to block them
and to silence them
and really to encircle them
from the rest of the world.
The sad thing
is there really doesn't
seem to be any respite on the horizon.
It's very clear
that the Iranian authorities view
what is happening,
especially in those minority areas.
In the west, in the Kurdish west
as an existential threat. The anchor.
Nima Elbagir,
thank you so much for
that exclusive report.