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https://www.rferl.org/a/father-outraged-son-death-honking-horn-iran-protests/32119483.html
Yahya Rahimi was driving to work when two men armed with large sticks attacked his car, shattering his windscreen.
As the 31-year-old slowly drove off, a gunshot was heard. Rahimi was dead, his bloodied head resting on the smashed driver’s window.
That is according to a video shared by Hengaw, a rights group registered in Norway that reports on Iran’s Kurdish region.
Activists said Rahimi was targeted by plainclothes security agents on October 8 because he had honked his car horn in solidarity with anti-government protests in the northwestern city of Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Iran’s Kurdistan Province.
Rahimi is among at least 300 people who have been killed in the government’s brutal crackdown on nationwide protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, in September.
Ali Azadi, the head of Kurdistan’s police force, said Rahimi was shot dead by “anti-revolutionary forces.” But his family says government forces killed him.
“Islamic republic agents had damaged his car, yet they didn’t leave him alone,” Rahimi’s father, Ahmad Rahimi, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda. “A few steps further, they martyred him.”
Ahmad Rahimi said the authorities had pressured him to declare his son was a member of the Basij paramilitary forces, a branch of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), in an apparent attempt to blame his death on the protesters.
“When we received the body, the authorities said, ‘We will register him as a martyr, you will receive [benefits], and we will give you blood money.’ I told them I don’t want such a thing.”…
Yahya Rahimi was driving to work when two men armed with large sticks attacked his car, shattering his windscreen.
As the 31-year-old slowly drove off, a gunshot was heard. Rahimi was dead, his bloodied head resting on the smashed driver’s window.
That is according to a video shared by Hengaw, a rights group registered in Norway that reports on Iran’s Kurdish region.
Activists said Rahimi was targeted by plainclothes security agents on October 8 because he had honked his car horn in solidarity with anti-government protests in the northwestern city of Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Iran’s Kurdistan Province.
Rahimi is among at least 300 people who have been killed in the government’s brutal crackdown on nationwide protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, in September.
Ali Azadi, the head of Kurdistan’s police force, said Rahimi was shot dead by “anti-revolutionary forces.” But his family says government forces killed him.
“Islamic republic agents had damaged his car, yet they didn’t leave him alone,” Rahimi’s father, Ahmad Rahimi, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda. “A few steps further, they martyred him.”
Ahmad Rahimi said the authorities had pressured him to declare his son was a member of the Basij paramilitary forces, a branch of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), in an apparent attempt to blame his death on the protesters.
“When we received the body, the authorities said, ‘We will register him as a martyr, you will receive [benefits], and we will give you blood money.’ I told them I don’t want such a thing.”…