Iranian twin sisters were brutally tortured for four months for protesting against the regime, with one sentenced to death after she was forced to confess to save her sister from being raped, their family revealed.
Taraneh and Romina Rahimi, 20 — who were still in high school when they joined millions in the January anti-regime protest — suffered beatings, broken feet, and had their hair ripped out while in Iranian custody, The Guardian reported.
The twins were unrecognizable by their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, 43, during a visit five months ago, with the family only learning recently that Taraneh would be put to death after confessing to taking part in the demonstrations.
Nourmohammadi claims her daughter only confessed after prison guards threatened to rape Romina in front of her if she did not comply.
Romina, meanwhile, was sentenced to 25-years in prison.
Their cousin, Masoud Nourmohammadi, who lives in the US, accused the state of trying to use Taraneh as an example to instill fear as the regime crackdown on dissent and abuses the death penalty on political prisoners.
“You can see her eyes and you know right away that she is a kind person,” he told The Guardian. “My sense is like they’re looking to put fear within the people, to say, ‘Look, no matter how fine you are, no matter how innocent you are, we can get you, and don’t come to the streets any more.’”
The twins are among the 16 people tried in Isfahan in connection to the demonstrations held in the city, where two people died in the unrest.
The defendants were accused of making Molotov cocktails and attacking Iranian security forces, but no murder charges were brought forth — instead, many of the defendants were charged with waging war against God, a capital offense in the country.
“The lawyer says there is nothing in this case against these children,” Masoud told RFE. “No evidence has been presented. There is no evidence.”
Masoud, a healthcare IT specialist living in the US, slammed the sham trial his cousins received and the horrific conditions their mother found them in.
“She did not recognise her own children: they were beaten up, badly swollen faces, bruises all over their body, broken elbows, knuckles, feet, and they basically had no hair because they would pull their hair and drag them from one cell to another cell. She found out that they had been in solitary confinement,” he told the Guardian.
The family has filed complaints over the sisters’ torture and threat of sexual abuse, but the complaints have not progressed in Isfahan’s courts.
The sisters’ lawyers are also preparing an appeal, which has been shot down before for the other defendants in the Isfahan case.
“They do not follow their own law,” Masoud said. “There is an 18-day period that lawyers can go and appeal but in a lot of [execution] cases recently that has not happened.
“They just sentence and take the kids and execute them and hang them,” he added.
