They came in the small hours, just as the dormitories were settling down for the night. Outside, Tehran was still in ferment, a city gripped by fury two days after a “stolen election.” Inside the dorms on Amirabad Street, students were trying to sleep, though nerves were jangling; just hours earlier several had been beaten in front of the main gate to the university.
What happened next developed into one of the seminal events of Iran’s post-election unrest: Police broke locks and then bones as they rampaged through the dormitories, attacked dozens of students, carted off more than 100 and killed five. The authorities still deny the incursion took place. But the account pieced together from interviews with five of those present tells a different story.
“We were getting ready to go to sleep when we suddenly heard them breaking the locks to enter our rooms,” said one of the 133 students arrested that night. “I’d seen them earlier beating students but I didn’t imagine that they would come inside. It’s even against Iranian law.”
Forty-six students from one dorm were arrested and taken to the basement of the Interior Ministry on nearby Fatemi Street. It was there, on the building’s upper floors, that the vote-counting and — opposition supporters claim — the rigging, was going on. Another 87 were taken to a security police building on Hafez Street.
Students spoke of torture and mistreatment.
Five died: They were Fatemeh Barati, Kasra Sharafi, Mobina Ehterami, Kambiz Shoaee and Mohsen Imani — buried the following day in Tehran’s famous Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, reportedly without their families being informed. Their names were confirmed by Tahkim Vahdat, a student organization.
Witnesses said the two women and three men were repeatedly beaten on the head with electric batons. Their families were warned not to talk about their children or hold funerals.
Under Iranian law, police, revolutionary guards and other militia may not enter universities — a legacy of the 1999 student riots.
“The police threw teargas into the dorms, beat us, broke the windows and forced us to lie on the ground,” one student said. “I had not even been protesting, but one of them jumped on me, sat on my back and beat me. And then, while pretending to search me for guns or knives, he abused me sexually.”
Another described the scene: “The riot police stood in two lines, formed a tunnel with their shields as its roof and made us run through it again and again while beating us and banging on their shields.”
“One of my roommates had a broken leg but they still made him run,” the student said.
Others spoke of similar experiences at the hands of the basij, or paramilitary militia.
“The basiji was on my back and told me: ‘I have not fucked anyone for the past seven years, you cute boy! I’ll show you what I can do to you when we arrive.’ They were harassing us and claiming we insulted them or the supreme leader.”
Injuries were ignored. One student who had lost an eye after being hit by a plastic bullet was not given medical attention.
“We were begging them to transfer these two who were suffering more than others to the hospital but they just said: ‘Let them die,’” a witness said.
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