Iranian security forces killed a teenager by shooting him with a point-blank rifle in the city of Mashhad. Sources told the Farsi edition of the BBC. Abolfazl Adinezadeh, 17, had skipped school on 8 October to join the anti-government protests that have been going on for over a month, but he has never returned home. Authorities did not comment. But his death certificate, viewed by the BBC, explains that he died of liver and kidney damage caused by bullets. Again according to the same sources, citing a coroner, the young man was hit from less than a meter away. “What crime did he commit, to hit him in the stomach 24 times?” Abolfazl’s father said during the funeral, according to a video of the ceremony.
The young man’s parents initially had no idea what happened to him after he joined the protests. Only the next day, the Ministry of Education phoned them to tell them to pick him up at the local police station where they found out that he was dead. “Shut your mouth and don’t talk to the media,” was the agents’ warning to Abolfazl’s father. Sources said the family was pressured to say that his son was a member of the basij, the notorious paramilitary force involved in the violent crackdown on protests. The authorities accused the “rioters”, they say supported by Iran’s foreign enemies, of killing members of the basij and other security forces during the riots that took place during the demonstrations. According to BBC sources, plainclothes security officers were present during Abolfazl’s funeral to discourage those who wanted to publicly express his anger, while some attendees were asked to delete videos of the feature from their cell phones. The driving force behind the protests for the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, in police custody for morals, are numerous Iranian teenagers who have ended up victims of the regime’s repression. According to the NGO Iran Human Rights, the deaths during the demonstrations are over 230, including at least thirty minors.