By Kayhan Life Staff
A survivor of group rape during Iran’s January 2026 crackdown has broken her silence in a rare first-hand testimony.
Released on March 9 by the award-winning initiative Hearing Their Voices ahead of a United Nations CSW70 side event on justice for Iranian women and girls, the testimony offers one of the first public survivor accounts to emerge from the January crackdown.
The survivor, identified by the pseudonym Maral, spoke through a testimony released by Generative AI for Good and Iran House. Organizers say her account describes systematic sexual violence carried out by Iranian security forces and foreign militias during the crackdown, as rights advocates continue trying to expose attacks on civilians. At the same time, survivors remain at risk and alleged perpetrators remain in power.
Maral’s testimony is direct and unsparing. “I remember everything,” she said. “The gunfire was very intense.” She said she was arrested and taken away in a van before being moved, along with other detainees, in groups of seven or eight, into a room. At first, she said, she thought they were being taken in only to be beaten. Instead, she said, the women were raped in groups.
She said the men spoke Arabic and included Afghan nationals as well as Iranians, whom she later came to believe were members of the Fatemiyoun militia. According to Maral, the attackers framed the abuse in ideological terms. “They said, ‘You are war booty,’” she recalled. She also described hearing one married woman plead with her assailants, saying she had a husband, only to be told, “You are lawful to me.”
Maral said the assaults continued for a week. When she was released, she said, she was left in acute psychological distress. “I was in a very, very severe mental crisis,” she said. She said she attempted suicide twice and thought about it every night. “I felt maybe the only way to break that humiliation inside yourself was to kill yourself,” she said, adding that she had only truly understood the extent of such trauma after enduring it herself.
Yet the testimony closes not in despair, but in defiance. “They do not know how strong an Iranian woman is,” Maral said. “She may decide ten times to end her life, but she rises again.”
To protect her identity, the video does not reveal Maral’s real face. Instead, organizers used what they describe as ethical generative AI to recreate her appearance while preserving her real voice, words, and testimony. The account is part of Hearing Their Voices, an initiative that documents survivors of conflict-related sexual violence across Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Israel, Rwanda, and now Iran.
According to Shiran Mlamdovsky Somech, founder and CEO of Generative AI for Good, “Ethical AI serves two purposes at once. For survivors, it provides a safe, anonymous platform that allows them to share their experiences and reclaim their voices without revealing their faces.”
Maral’s testimony will be highlighted in connection with a U.N. side event in New York titled “Voice of Iranian Women: Pathways to Justice and Rights.”
“For Iranian women, seeking justice is often met with silence, fear, and systemic discrimination,” said Iran House founder Azadeh Afsahi. “These stories must be acknowledged if accountability and healing are ever to be possible.”
