Amirali Heydari, 17, died from a gunshot wound to the chest – but that is not what his death certificate says. Instead, Iranian authorities recorded his cause of death as a fall from a height, a family member has said.
Security officials at a hospital in Kermanshah, western Iran, where relatives found Amirali's body, did not want "death by live fire" written on the document, one of Amirali's relatives told The National.
“The man said, ‘we are not giving death certificates, if we give one, we will say that the cause of death was an accident or that he fell from a height,’” the relative said from outside Iran in a phone interview.
Last Thursday, Amirali joined three friends to protest in Kermanshah, driven by anger over worsening economic conditions and a sharp decline in living standards. He never came home.
By half past midnight on Friday, his family had not heard from him, so they went out to search for him. They found his body in the city's Taleghani Hospital – the youngster had been shot dead with a bullet to the chest that the relative said was fired by government security forces.
Plainclothes guards at the hospital demanded bribes of one billion tomans (about $7,000) and insisted on giving the false cause of death before handing over the body and death certificate, said the relative, who requested their name and location remain undisclosed for the safety of family members still in Iran.
“When the family went to collect his body, they refused to hand over the corpse and imposed conditions on doing so,” he said. “The family managed to get the body by bribing a couple of people.”
Brutal night
Amirali, one of two brothers, was a high-school pupil who juggled studies with a part-time job in his home city of Kermanshah.
“He was calm and composed – he would study, go to the gym and go to work” the family member said. "He was everyone's classmate, everyone's neighbour. Amirali’s generation is all the same, they want to learn some sort of profession so they can live a simple, peaceful life."
Two of Amirali’s friends were also shot dead by security forces that night, the relative said, while a third was left in a coma. The use of live fire and the withholding of bodies by security forces is consistent with reports by a number of human rights organisations outside Iran.
“That night there was a brutal crackdown in several neighbourhoods, there was horrific slaughter,” said the relative. Details of Amirali's death that corroborate their account were reported by Hengaw, a rights group based in Norway.
At least 2,615 people have been killed in the widespread public unrest since December 28, US-based Hrana rights group estimates. Of these, 2,435 were protesters, including 13 children, Hrana said, with 153 security personnel and government supporters also killed, as well as 14 bystanders. An additional 882 deaths remain under investigation, said the rights group in its latest statement amid a near-total internet shutdown imposed by the Iranian regime since last Thursday.
Hrana data relies on the work of activists inside and outside the country. The National is not able to independently verify the tallies and Iran does not publish an official number of those killed in the demonstrations and surrounding chaos.
Confirming information is complicated by the shutdown, though some details have been seeping out through Starlink, which works in the absence of wider connectivity. The relative was able to contact family in Iran briefly, which is how he learnt of Amirali's fate.
'Suffocated soul'
Watching from outside the country, the relative is struggling to process the scale of the violence that has gripped Iran over the past two weeks.
“I feel like my soul is suffocated, not just for Amirali but for all the blood that has been poured in the street – innocent blood,” he said. “A kid of 17 has nothing to gain politically. Why do they have to be killed, for what reason?”
This is the largest activist movement in Iran since 2009, when demonstrations broke out over disputed presidential election results. The latest protests began over an economy in free fall and grew to encompass political demands for an end to Iran's clerical government, have spread to all 31 provinces.
Human rights groups outside Iran hold government security and military forces responsible for most of the deaths. The Iranian government claims armed groups and “terrorist operatives” backed by the US and Israel are responsible for the fatal violence, without offering evidence. On Wednesday, the state held a mass funeral for scores of members of the security forces who have been killed in the past two weeks.
Amirali, whose body was buried in his father's home village near Kermanshah, merely wanted to live an ordinary life, the relative said.
“For the future, he wanted peace and the right to live, the right to freedom – things that don’t exist in the Islamic Republic for most young people."
