Female virgins "forcibly married" Then "raped to make exeuctions legal" Girls feared rape more than executions

MEMBERS of Iran's feared Basij militia forcibly marry female virgin prisoners the night before scheduled executions, raping their new "wives" and making it religiously acceptable to execute them, a self-professed member of the paramilitary group says.

The anonymous militiaman, exposing a part of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's religious regime in Iran, told The Jerusalem Post that at age 18 he was "given the honor to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death".



In the Islamic Republic of Iran it is illegal to execute a woman if she is a virgin, the former guard said.



So the Government arranges "wedding" ceremonies to be conducted the night before executions, and prisoners are forced to have sexual intercourse with a guard, Fox News reported.



Raped by her new "husband," a female prisoner is now fit to be put to death.



"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," said the militiaman, who told the Jerusalem Post he had just been released from prison himself after freeing two teenagers rounded up during post-election protests.



Some of the prisoners in his care were drugged with sleeping pills to make them docile, as the girls in their custody always fought back, he said, fearing the night of the rape more deeply than their executions the following day.



"I remember hearing them cry and scream after (the rape) was over," he told the paper.



"I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her fingernails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

The Iranian embassy in Australia rejected the claims, saying the source of the news - The Jerusalem Post - was "a Zionist publication, the bitter enemy of the Islamic Republic of Iran".

"According to the Islamic Law, female virgin marriage is only possible with the consent of parents or guardians as well as the virgin females," the embassy said.

"It is obvious that releasing such blatant lies is only with the aim of hostility and animosity with Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran."





Originally published as Virgin prisoners raped for 'legal' executions