Tehran on fire on June 16
Photo: Hamed Saver
Iranian doctors: Nearly 100 killed in riots
Two physicians who recently visited France say at least 92 people killed in post-election unrest in Islamic republic, although official Iranian reports speak of only 20 deaths
At least 92 people were killed in post-election riots
in Iran,
French newspaper Le Figaro's website reported Wednesday, based on the testimonies of two Iranian doctors who recently visited France.
Officially, Iran declared that only 20 people had been killed in the riots, although unofficial estimates reported of dozens of casualties. This is the first time sources inside Iran provide an exact number.
According to the doctors, this is the unofficial estimate of the number of people who died in hospitals in the Tehran area.
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The doctors refused to be identified for fear of their personal safety. They told the newspaper that they had kept quiet so far because they had feared for their lives.
"Ever since the riots broke out, the militiamen and security forces in civilian clothing have been terrorizing the hospitals in Tehran," one of them said.
One of the doctors said that following the events of Monday, June 15 – dubbed "Black Monday" – 10 bodies and 28 injured people were received by a hospital in the Iranian capital.
"We discovered that the bullets had infiltrated in a diagonal manner, meaning that they were shot from above, from rooftops," the doctor said.
According to the physicians, the casualties included a eight-months pregnant woman and six youths, who were killed in the city of Shahriar, near Tehran. "They died from wounds to their neck," the second doctor said.
One of his colleagues had told him that "their skulls were shattered and their brain was opened, apparently in order to remove the bullet and conceal evidence."
In order to hide the cause of death, doctors at Tehran's hospitals were ordered to declare that the death was from natural causes. One of the doctor's colleagues at an intensive care unit in one of the hospitals paid a heavy price when he refused to cooperate.
"After he went missing for 36 hours, he was found on a pavement near the hospital unconscious and with his face bleeding," the doctor said. "Several hospitals organized a strike. But the state television said that the reason for the strike was a conflict over salaries."
As the medical staff refused to cooperate with the regime, the government transferred the bodies to a military hospital or to a different unknown place. According to the doctors, organs were removed from the bodies, and the casualties' families were forced to cooperate with an "organ donation" deception. Only then the regime agreed to hand over the body for burial.
