Iran appears to have entered a cycle of deadly violence after three more people were killed by security forces overnight during a protest rally held after the funeral of another slain protester on Wednesday.
The funerals for the protesters have become turning points in the unrest that has gripped the clerical state since the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini on 16 September.
Hengaw, a Norway-based human rights group, said security forces shot dead at least three protesters in the city of Mahabad, near Iran’s western border with Iraq, on Thursday night. .
The deadly shooting came after mourners paying tribute to Ismail Mauludi, a 35-year-old protester killed Wednesday night, left his funeral and headed for the governor’s office.
“Death to the dictator,” protesters shouted, using a slogan aimed at Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as they burned the Mahabad governor’s office.
Amnesty International said in a statement late Thursday that “unlawful killings” by Iran’s security forces had claimed the lives of at least eight people in four provinces in 24 hours.
In a highly unusual admission of guilt by Iran’s security apparatus, authorities in Sistan and Baluchestan province said the police chief of the provincial capital Zahedan had been fired because of “deficiencies” in his handling of the protests in the city on September 30. .
An internal investigation found that police had fired on protesters and that this contributed to what the investigation said was a total death toll of 35. An order has also been issued to pay compensation to the families of the casualties in a further sign that the Iranian state fears that tensions in the province have not subsided.
Zahedan’s protest had been called in response to the allegation of the rape of a teenage girl by a police commander. Rights groups have put the death toll on that day, which has become known as Bloody Friday among Iranians, at more than 90.
Iranians are protesting against the regime this Thursday. Photograph: AP
After a second consecutive night of protests across the country, the United Nations human rights office said on Friday it was concerned that authorities were refusing to release some of the bodies of those killed.
“We have seen a lot of abuse … but also harassment of the protestors’ families,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the office of the high commissioner for human rights, told a news conference in Geneva. “It is particularly worrying that the authorities have been transferring injured protesters from hospitals to detention centers and have refused to hand over the bodies of those killed to their families,” he said.
Shamdasani added that in some cases authorities were placing conditions on the release of the bodies, asking families not to hold a funeral or speak to the media.
In a related incident, the family of well-known journalist Reza Haghighatnejad has accused security agents of kidnapping his body after his death in Germany in order to prevent his funeral.
Haghighatnejad, former editor of IranWire and eloquent exiled critic of the regime, died of cancer in Berlin on October 17 at the age of 45. His body was repatriated to Iran for burial on October 25.
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Commenting on the video, his mother said: “I haven’t seen my son in six years. They let me take his body to Iran, but Sepah (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) or the police kidnap his body at the airport.”
Haghighatnejad’s sister, Sara, said she had been unable to find any information about his body.
RFE/RL, where he worked from 2019 until his death, quoted family and friends as saying the necessary permits have been issued to bury the body in Haghighatnejad’s hometown of Shiraz. But the family is now being pressured by security and intelligence agencies to agree to have his body buried in another cemetery outside the city.
RFE/RL President and CEO Jamie Fly said the Iranian regime’s handling of Haghighatnejad’s family was “shameful and disgusting” and that they deserve to be allowed to bury him without bullying
The Iranian regime and its allies have falsely tried to link the protests sparked by Amini’s death to a mass shooting at a shrine in Shiraz on Wednesday that has been claimed by the Islamic State group.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Shiite Islamist political party and militant group Hezbollah, drew a direct link between the two on Thursday when he said: “Those who have been directing the recent unrest in Iran are the ones who sent aggressors to Shiraz .killing innocent people”.
Mohammad Ismail Kothari, an elected representative of Tehran in Iran’s parliament, claimed without evidence that the attack on the shrine “definitely was not without support, and it has had the financial and political support of countries that have opposed us in the last 40 days”.
There is wider anger in Iranian official circles over the perception that Western media did not cover the Shiraz attack to the same extent as the protest movement.