Guilty Feelings of a Revolutionary Guard 20 Years Later

During the terror years of the eighties which led to the massacre of the Iranian political prisoners in 1988, there was a disturbing news which further shocked any decent human being.

The leadership of the Left wing groups in Iran were still ploughing through Marx and Lenin's writings and squabling whether the clerics, who were in complete control of the country, represented the petty bourgeoise class, natural allies of the Proleteriat according to Lenin, or a merchant bourgeoise class, blah blah. While their young, even teenage ordinary supporters and sympathisers were being lined up for mass executions, the Left's leadership in Iran considered such intellectual theoretical debates as having top priority, because the correct Marxist-Leninst formulation, in their warped out of touch minds, was important to decide the 'correct' tactics against the regime!

Yet any sane rational person by hearing such shocking news that was coming out of the Islamic Republic prisons would say, what difference does it make? these are nothing but brutal savages.

The horrific news, was that female prisoners who were virgins, were raped before their execution. Apparently according to the Koran, virgin girls will always go to heaven, and by raping them before their execution, one would prevent them from entering the Paradise. Clerics in the prisons would perform the Sighe, temporary shi'ite marriage, ceremony and their 'temporary husbands' could do as they pleased before these young girls were executed in the morning.

Ayatollah Montazeri, who was the original designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, as the next Supreme Leader, also mentions in his memoirs, the enormous feeling of guilt he suffers for not having stopped this loathsome conduct in Islamic prisons at the time.

Families of these executed girls also reported, how a prison guard or a revolutionary guard, would bring the tragic devastating news of their daughter's death to their household and have the further audacity of telling them, 'by the way, last night, we were your son-in-law'. Just imagine what these families went through in those moments.

In a Persian weblog, You Killed Iranians but Iran Lives On, the blogger writes about an uncle who is now a Major in the Revolutionary Guards. The uncle's wife is dead and the guilty feelings are catching up with him in his old age, perhaps because he now sees himself in the waiting lounge for the next world. The uncle was stationed in the Shiraz prison at the time, and was amongst a group due to be sent to the war fronts the next day.
After the evening meal and reading the Komayl prayers, the prison governor, told them he had good news, 'You can choose any of the female prisoners due to be executed as your temporary wives for the night.'

Some of them refused to take part in this crime, the blogger's uncle was also tempted to turn away and nearly did, but someone shouted at him, 'Hey, where are you going, you don't want to leave this world without having tried it, do you?' The temptation and his youth, and his uncertain future at the war front finally won over.
According to the blogger's uncle, the young girl said she was sentenced to death, after she had gone along to a Tudeh Party meeting, Iranian pro-Soviet Communist Party. Her name was Leyla. After he spent the night with her, he watched her get executed along with the others. At the time he justified the unsettling experience to himself, by thinking' This is necessary so that Islam can spread'.

Like many other henchmen, the Revolutionary Guard who took part in this inhumane act, is now suffering the after shocks of his barbarity, yet some Tudeh Party affiliates of those days, like Elaheh Rostami, SOAS lecturer, and Haleh Afshar, the People's Peer!, still try and justify the regime and claim women in Islamic Republic are better off than before by quoting meaningless statistics like 'More women are vaccinated now than during the Shah's regime'. With some, perhaps, the guilty conscience will never catch up.