We know for a fact that rape and sexual abuse has occurred and has even been rampant across the Iranian judicial and prison system, with rape and sexual assault being used as a form of psychological and physical torture, control and as a symbol of power, occurring within prisons between criminals, perpetrated by prison wardens, in cells by police and authorities and as a means of interrogation.

It is less clear whether women about to be executed are forcibly married and raped. For a start, these women are dead. They cannot tell, unlike multiple witness and survivors testimonies of men, women and children on rape in prison and by the authorities. Families may be unwilling to check for signs of sexual assault or rape. Even if medical evidence or witness evidence is uncovered, telling the wider world would be dangerous, shameful or simply difficult.

However, there are accounts involving these forced marriages and rapes before execution. The most infamous is probably the testimony of an anonymous Iranian man to the Jerusalem Post, who witnessed and knew the perpetrators of the rape and forced marriages. Although the Post claims the source is reliable and was verified, being anonymous, we have no way to know how true these claims were or are. And frankly, due to the strained nature of Israeli-Iranian relationships, we don't even know whether this source exists, although that would be the case with all anonymous sources. However, there are other accounts, one Mina Vadin reported seeing 70 executions of women in 1982, when she was imprisoned, with many of the women having been raped beforehand, although marriage wasn't mentioned. At a(n informal) hearing led by the UN Special Representative (Pohlo), one anonymous witness testified seeing a woman being raped before execution, in 1988. Other witnesses claimed women were forcibly married before execution, then raped, to prevent them from going to heaven after execution. By 1990, the UN Special Representative was continuing to report that this was an ongoing issue, but again, we don't know how reliable these claims were.

One prisoner- a woman held for eight years and narrowly avoided the mass executions of 1988- said 'One of the most common finds is that female political prisoners, especially during the years when we were in prison, were mostly 17 or 18 years old—young and unmarried. [They] thought that girls must be raped before being executed so that they don’t go to paradise. This was systematic.' Her name is Soudabeh Ardavan. (Source). Despite the source claiming it is attempting to remain neutral, there are problems with this source too, although Soudabeh Ardavan herself has gone onto do interviews and artwork about her time in prison.

One Saeeda Siabi spoke of her sister in law who told her mother she had been raped the day before her execution- she was executed in 1982- to prevent her going to heaven. This also happened with a woman named Safia Sadiqi, related to Siabi by her sisters who saw her physical injuries. (Source). Another Kurdish former peshmerga relates a story about his 15 year old sister, executed in 1983, who was allegedly raped prior to her execution, but it is unclear whether this was specifically due to her execution or simply part of previous systematic sexual abuse of prisoners.

Some sources: Shahi Sadr, Iranian Human Rights Documentation Centre, Abdol Karim Lahidji, the deputy director of International Federation for Human Rights. However, we don't have much beyond that as evidence, and reports by former prisoners may involve confusion over dates, the reasoning behind rapes etc, and therefore this may never have even happened. The Iranian authorities deny this practice and there is no known order for this to be carried out, even if it happens or happened with knowledge of the prison authorities, it was not actually part of the legal process or anything like that at all. The Supreme Leader himself said 'The ban on the execution of girls unless they are married is a rumour spread by enemies to whitewash their own crimes and treasons against the country and to damage the reputation of the Islamic system.” As noted in some witness testimonies, some guards and wardens were, of course, nicer than others. We have limited reports of this form of sexual violence which may be because it itself was rare or limited, because the chances of such reports reaching the wider world are low, because the chances of other people learning of what happened are low and so on. We must also acknowledge that reports that we do have are not exactly objective (not that any source can be, completely). We also know that there does not appear to be any religious grounds for this, virgins are not guaranteed entry into paradise (initially) and therefore, regardless of their marital status or virginity, they could be condemned.

These all come from interviews and personal testimony. We have no evidence beyond that. We have no statistics, nothing in the law. We have some testimonies or support for the fact this has happened from the International Federation for Human Rights, a more trustworthy source than the other ones, but we don't know where their beliefs come from.