Iran’s judiciary rejected on Thursday a BBC report suggesting a teenage girl was sexually assaulted and killed by Revolutionary Guards during the 2022 protests triggered by Mahsa Amini’s death.
Protests erupted across Iran over the September 2022 death of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.
The body of 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, who disappeared on September 20 after joining one of those demonstrations in the capital, was found after a week.
At the time, the authorities in Iran denied the death was linked to the protests and said she committed suicide by jumping from a building.
But a BBC report this week contained allegations the teenager had been sexually assaulted and killed after being arrested by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In an article on its website, the BBC News said it had no immediate comment.
“The so-called investigative report of BBC World about Nika Shakarami showed that this media outlet … is not committed to truth and reality,” said a statement posted on the judiciary’s Mizan Online website.
It added that the report showed the British broadcaster “did not and does not pay attention to the most basic principle of a documented report, which is the possibility of verifying and validating the sources and documents”.
The judiciary’s statement, which contains a number of photos and documents from Tehran’s Legal Medicine Organization, rejected the molestation claim and said the teenager had committed suicide.
Months of unrest following Amini’s death saw hundreds of people killed including dozens of security personnel, and thousands more arrested.
Iranian officials labelled the protests as riots and accused Tehran’s foreign enemies of fomenting the unrest.
Nine men have been executed in protest-related cases involving killings and other violence against security forces.
