Iranian security forces kill Haleh Sahabi, daughter of Ezzatollah Sahabi

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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In a truly heartbreaking and tragic turn of events on Wednesday, Haleh Sahabi, daughter of prominent dissident Ezzatollah Sahabi lost her life at the funeral of her father after she was attacked by security forces.
 
Haleh Sahabi died from a cardiac arrest today after being struck by security agents monitoring the funeral proceedings in Lavasan, a small city north of Tehran.
The 54-year-old activist and contributor to the magazine Chashm Andaz (Panorama) had been in prison until she was granted furlough following her father’s stroke on 30 April. She was arrested during anti-government protests in August 2009, and was later sentenced to two years in prison. In January 2011, she was summoned to prison to serve her jail term.
Alireza Janeh, a high-ranking Tehran police official, told the Iranian Student news agency ISNA “the reason for miss Haleh Sahabi’s death was not a scuffle with the security forces; but because he she had already been suffering from a heart condition and this is why she passed away.”
“Her medical record is also available. The death of her father and the hot weather were additional reasons which led to her demise,” Janeh said, while rejecting the numerous eyewitness reports about the agents’ resort to brute force. “His family had a good cooperation with us. We also assisted the family for the burial.” It should be mentioned that the temperature in Lavasan was 21 °C on Wednesday.
Nevertheless many witnesses strongly refute the state’s narrative of today’s events.
Shiite cleric Ahmad Montazeri, son of late Grand Ayatollah Montazerim, dismissed the claims made by Iranian officials: “The beating was exactly complemented by insults. I was standing a few metres from her. I heard all those near her saying that one of the agents was trying to seize a big poster of Sahabi and his daughter [Haleh] from her hands. After pulling the picture from her hands and her subsequent resistance and protest [against the move], he hit her firmly with his elbow and caused her to collapse on the ground. They immediately transferred her to hospital accompanied by a doctor, but unfortunately she passed away there.”
“One of the clear and evident points during today’s ceremony was the presence of security and plain-clothed forces who were very offensive, vulgar and aggressive. They sought to exercise violence, and to beat up and insult the people even more so than in previous events and occasions. They had absolutely no respect for the mourning families and those present.”
In his interview with opposition website Jaras, Montazeri said that throughout the procession, the state-sponsored thugs and their commander were laughing and screaming scornfully during the service, a move clearly aimed at affronting grievers.
He added that the Iranian regime was responsible for the “martyrdom” of Haleh Sahabi. “The officials of the Islamic Republic must investigate the matter … there were many cameras held by plain-clothed forces and the police, they were filming every second of the ceremony and each and every one of those present in the crowd … using their own recorded footages it can be determined who exactly committed this crime and martyred miss Haleh. If they do not launch an inquiry into the case very quickly, the whole Islamic Republic will stand accused [of this crime]. If the issue is investigated, the assailant will be identified.”
Haleh’s son Yahya Shamekhi Jaras that his mother would be buried at night in Lavasan close to where his grandfather was interred on Wednesday.
Speaking to Kaleme, Ardeshir Amir-Arjomand, a top advisor to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, said the “highest ranks” of the Iranian regime were responsible for the tragic loss of Haleh Sahabi’s life. He called on Green Movement supporters to pay their respects to the deceased father and daughter. Following the rigged 2009 presidential election, the two had spoken out continuously in favour of the pro-democracy Green Movement.
The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders announced on Wednesday that it was “shocked” to learn about the death of Sahabi’s daughter.
“We address our most sincere condolences to the Sahabi family for this double tragedy,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Iran has lost a great defender of freedom of expression and the regime has killed his daughter, an active defender of the families of political prisoners. We will not forget this crime. The two press freedom predators at the head of the Islamic Republic are responsible for this courageous woman’s death.”
The group said Haleh “had known the suffering of the families of prisoners of conscience all her life.” “Since her childhood, her father and other relatives had spent spells in prison under two successive regimes. As her result of her activities in support of the families of political prisoners who had been executed during the 1980s, she became a spokesperson for the victims of political oppression.”
On Tuesday and after more than six decades of activism, Haleh’s father, veteran political figure Ezzatollah Sahabi, died at the age of 81 after a month long coma caused by a stroke on 30 April.
Shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Sahabi was appointed as a member of the Council of the Islamic Revolution and was later appointed by the interim prime minister at the time as chief of budget.
In the early 1990s, Sahabi began publishing the “Irane Farda” (“Iran of tomorrow”) magazine, which was finally banned after he was arrested along with around forty other nationalist-religious figures, in spring 2000. After enduring two years of imprisonment, Sahabi was finally released on a heavy bail of two millions Rials (around 119,000 US dollars at the time). He was subsequently sentenced to eleven years in jail.
The heart-breaking events of today have illustrated once more the willingness of the Iranian authorities to resort to the most cowardly acts, just so it can rule with an iron fist. A regime that has proven time after time its readiness to sink to unimaginable lows to supress its people, even if it involves murdering a daughter at the funeral of her father in broad daylight.
Tonight, in many part of Tehran, cries of Allah-O-Akbar once more pierced the skies of the nation’s capital to echo the people’s grief, disgust, and anger towards today’s sad events.
Sooner or later, this extraordinary resolve to carrying out the most heinous and un-Islamic acts with little sign of remorse will surely hasten the audible downfall of the pharaoh.
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