Via Ann Althouse, a horrifying account of an Iranian volunteer government security man who was considered so good at his job that he was given "the honor" of being an official government rapist.

He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said.

Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"

"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

"I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

Returning to the events of the last few weeks, and his decision to set free the two teenage detainees, he said he "honestly" did not know why he had released them, a decision that led to his own arrest, "but I think it was because they were so young. They looked like children and I knew what would happen to them if they weren't released."

He said that while a man is deemed "responsible for his own actions at 13, for a woman it is 9," and that it was freeing the 15-year-old girl that "really got me in trouble.

Far from being engaged in crime or misconduct, Iranian police who rape young girls are just doing their job. It's sometimes hard to believe that we're living on the same planet with such a monstrous government, much less imagining we're engaged in constructive dialogue with the people who run it.

Ironically, if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "We never execute virgins in Iran," he'd technically be telling the truth -- just as when he said "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," he drew laughter, but he was also technically telling the truth. Iranian virgins will not be executed until after they've been raped, and instead of having homosexuals "like in our country" (where gay marriage is debated), Iran has homosexuals like in their country (where gays are hanged).

And we have a president who worries that these illegitimate and murderous leaders might see us as meddling.