4 months after the disappearance of Molavi Abdul Ghaffar Naqshbandi, the Sunni imam from the Iranian metropolis of Rask in Sistan-Baluchistan Province who disclosed the alleged rape of a 15-year-old woman by a neighborhood police commander, a video has surfaced wherein he warns of the likelihood that he could also be “assassinated” or “apprehended.”
Naqshbandi disappeared after he was summoned to a courtroom within the northeastern Iranian metropolis of Mashhad late final yr. Since attending a courtroom session in December, his whereabouts have been unknown and his household says they don’t have any data on the place he is likely to be detained.
The information of the alleged sexual assault of a 15-year-old woman by the Chabahar police commander sparked mass protests within the southeastern Iranian metropolis of Zahedan. The protesters demanded accountability and have been met with a violent and bloody response from safety forces.
Virtually 100 folks have been killed, and a whole bunch extra injured by safety forces within the unrest, which got here on high of protests touched off by the demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini whereas within the custody of Tehran’s morality police for an alleged violation of the hijab regulation.
“If I’m killed, those that didn’t tolerate my phrases, they’re the reason for my homicide,” Naqshbandi says within the recording, launched on his official Telegram social media channel.
He goes on within the video to say the likelihood he can be arrested and tortured.
“In the event that they arrest and imprison me, as a result of they’ve the facility to arrest us many times, they’ll additionally broadcast pressured confessions from us in entrance of the tv,” he says, showing to point any confession which will come out wouldn’t be of his personal volition.
The date of the recording, which lasts about 4 minutes and 30 seconds, isn’t recognized. The submit appeared on the location on March 28.
The disappearance of Naqshbandi got here after an obvious try to discredit a high Sunni cleric by the native consultant of Iran’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In December, a leaked doc from the hard-line Fars information company mentioned Khamenei instructed safety and army officers to try to shame Molavi Abdolhamid, a non secular chief for Iran’s Sunni Muslim inhabitants, who’s a vocal critic of the federal government, as a substitute of arresting him.
One other distinguished Iranian Sunni cleric, Molavi Abdulmajid, can also be amongst these to have been detained.
In a January 19 interview with RFE/RL, Abdulmajid criticized the federal government for producing an environment of insecurity in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan Province and a hotbed of the protest motion, and mentioned the protests within the metropolis will proceed.
The federal government has unleashed a brutal crackdown on the months of unrest — one of many deepest challenges to the Islamic regime because the revolution in 1979 — that erupted following the September 16 demise of Amini.
Sunni Muslims make up a majority of the inhabitants in Sistan-Baluchistan Province and Kurdistan, however account for less than about 10 % of the inhabitants in Shi’a-dominated Iran general.
Since Amini’s demise, greater than 500 folks have been killed within the police crackdown, in accordance with rights teams. A number of thousand extra have been arrested, together with many protesters, in addition to journalists, attorneys, activists, digital rights defenders, and others.
