Pen Norway protests the arrest of 19 year old, Iranian satirist, Elham Afroutan who is now reportedly dead

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.

Ehlam Afroutan, 19-year-old Iranian satirist who wrote for Tamaddon'eh Hormozgan Newspaper, in Southern Iran, was arrested in January for writing a satirical piece, likening Khomeini to the H.I.V. Virus and the entire regime to AIDS. According to several reliable sources, the regimes notorious interrogators tortured and gang-raped Elham before she slipped into a coma and is said to have died. The regime however is claiming that the death was a suicide, a story that is exactly reminiscent of the case of Iranian/Canadian journalist, Zahra Kazemi, tortured, gang-raped and murdered in July of 2003 and also then have said to have committed suicide. READ MORE

However in the case of Ms. Kazemi, a doctor employed at Bagheeyehollah Hospital in Tehran (connected with the revolutionary guards) where Zahra Kazemi, deceased Iranian/Canadian photojournalist was transfered before dying, left Iran and for the first time, in an interview with a German publication divulged that the regime's interogators and goons had brutally gang-raped the photojournalist while she was under qustioning and torture.

The German weekly, Die Zeit [in the Thursday, March 31st, 2005 issue] states that Kazemi was delivered to the hospital directly after undergoing severe torture in prison; she died on July 11th, 2003. Dr. Shahram Azam, who examined Kazemi at the hospital was able to provide a firsthand account. Fifty four year old Kazemi was in a coma when delivered to the hospital in the early hours of June 27th 2003; her body was covered with contusions and as such, she was transfered to the emergency room of Bagheeyehollah Hospital.

Dr. Azam reports that it was quite clear that she had been severely tortured and brutally gang-raped. He went on to say that the regime's authorities (the security forces and the judiciary) continue to play the blame game and therefore at this juncture felt that there was nothing left for him to do but to leave Iran and find a way to inform the world of the regime's barbarous nature and the brutality perpatrated on the Iran people, on a daily basis, all over Iran for 26 years now.

Dr. Azam left Iran with his wife and daughter and has moved Canada on assylum for the time being.

On Tuesday, February 14th, PEN Norway sent a letter to the office of Ahmadinejad and other of the regimes authorities protesting Afroutan and her other 6 colleagues arrests, demanding their immediate release, however it seems to be too late. In the letter, Carl Morten Iversen, Secretary General of Pen Norway, severely condemns the arrests and defends freedom of speech and press.