On September 17, 2026, a 78-second video was widely shared on social media. The footage appears to have been recorded by a police officer present at the scene. The Observers team geolocated the video to the courtyard of a police station in Tabriz, capital of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, where most inhabitants speak a dialect of the Azeri language.
In a video posted on social media on September 17, 2026, Iranian police officers are seen beating and sexually humiliating a teenage detainee in footage recorded at a police station in the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan. In one sequence, an officer pulls the boy’s trousers partly down as others mock him while two officers slap and grab his buttocks. © observateurs At least five Iranian police officers and another man in civilian clothes can be seen in the video. Four officers punch and kick the teenage boy, while two subject him to sexualised humiliation.
At one point, one officer pulls the boy’s trousers partly down. The officers then mock him as two of them slap and grab his buttocks. The dialogue heard in the video is in Azeri.
Subtitles have been added in Persian. _Policeman: Do you see him? He goes around pulling knives on people. He’s the big thug in the neighbourhood!
We haven’t seen your ass yet. Oh, he’s got a white ass, the big thug in the neighbourhood! Don’t move, you thug._ _Policeman:_ _It’s_ _so white [a reference to the teen’s buttocks]_ _._ _He’s going to be raped at this police station._ On September 18, police in East Azerbaijan province said the incident dated back to June 4, when the teenager was arrested following a street fight.
They said the boy was 17 at the time of his arrest. They did not say whether he had been charged or convicted in connection with the incident. By cross-referencing multiple sources, including other videos of police stations in Tabriz available on social media, FRANCE 24 was able to geolocate the footage.
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