Families of Iranians executed or forcibly disappeared by state authorities have been left without answers about the fate of their loved ones, in what human rights organizations describe as a longstanding pattern of repression by the Islamic Republic.
In interviews with The Jerusalem Post, relatives of four victims detailed cases of secret executions, enforced disappearances, and killings during protests, describing how the regime systematically withholds information, denies due process, and, in some cases, refuses to return bodies for burial.
The Islamic Republic’s violent suppression of protests has repeatedly drawn international condemnation, from the Green Movement in 2009 to the Women, Life, Freedom demonstrations in 2022.
Most recently, the regime’s crackdown in January drew global attention, with human rights groups reporting that tens of thousands were killed in the streets by security forces during demonstrations over the country’s economic crisis.
Yet, the use of force against dissent is not new; it has been a central tool of control since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. With thousands arrested, held in secret prisons, and murdered by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the full scale of Tehran’s atrocities may never be known.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and countless other humanitarian organizations have warned of the regime’s systematic violation of human rights, which peaks every time the Iranian people demand change.
Farhad Abdullapour is one of many to keep his brother Hedayat’s memory alive. He spoke to the Post from Iraq with an AI-translator, where speaking to Israeli media could endanger his life, but rejected the offer to anonymize his story, as did all of those who spoke with the Post.
The two grew up in the Urmia Province, though Abdullapour was forced to leave in 2017 after repeated harassment by the Revolutionary Guards. An arrest for the crime of revolution against the state forced him to flee to Iraq, as his brother sat in prison.
Recounting the last time he saw Hedayat, Abdullapour said his brother’s mental state was poor, damaged by the countless hours of torture he endured in Urmia Central Prison in the West Azerbaijan province.
Denied proper medical treatment, Hedayat lost hearing in one of his ears, and he looked gaunt from the food deprivation.
Held in unsanitary conditions, denied the ability to make telephone calls or access newspapers, Hedayat could do nothing but imagine his freedom, his brother recounted. All he could speak about was his impending release, though he was sentenced to death in 2018.
After the sentencing hearing, Kurds demonstrated outside UNHCR headquarters in Erbil, demanding the UN intervene in the execution. The intervention never came.
Hedayat was secretly executed by the regime on May 11, 2020, in a military base in Oshnavieh, Abdullapour told the Post. He left behind a wife, two children, his bereaved parents, and siblings.
His family was not informed until a month after his murder, and authorities have continued to deny their requests for information on his burial location.
Iranian law requires authorities to inform lawyers of the execution of their clients 48 hours in advance of their deaths, and grants families the right to visit their relatives for the last time, a right often withheld from Iran’s ethnic minorities.
The official cause of death listed on the state’s documentation is “collisions with hard or sharp objects.” Amnesty International reported that the current understanding was that a firing squad killed Hedayat.
“The relentlessly cruel games the Iranian authorities are playing with Hedayat Abdollahpour’s family must stop. By refusing to reveal the truth, they are deliberately causing untold distress to his loved ones,” Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said at the time of his death.
“Hedayat Abdollahpour’s body must be returned to his family, and an independent investigation must be conducted into the circumstances surrounding his secret execution and ongoing enforced disappearance,” she said.
The regime claimed Hedayat took up arms against the IRGC during a 2016 clash with members of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), a claim denied by his family.
Human rights groups, such as the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, have asserted that Hedayat was tortured into giving his confession, subjected to electric shocks, and “thong soles of the legs with cable.”
“My brother was innocent. He was not armed. He was like a family man, and he did his job…he loved life and freedom,” Abdullapour told the Post.
“It is very difficult for me. This is a kind of kidnapping, a kind of fear, a kind of pain. They have not even given my brother’s body. After my brother’s martyrdom, our family’s situation deteriorated. The regime threatened our family every day,” he said.
A representative of PDKI confirmed to the Post that Hedayat was a freedom fighter for their organization, sharing the original statement published in 2020, which read that Hedayat’s sacrifice “will remain an inspiration for continued resistance against the anti-Kurdish policies of the Islamic Republic.”
Ethnic minorities targeted by Iranian regime
Ethnic minorities, in particular members of the Kurdish community, are targeted by the regime. Abdullapour said that security officials labeled Kurds as separatist agents of Israel and the US regardless of their individual ideologies.
Asked about the January massacre, where human rights organizations have claimed as many as 30,000 were killed, Abdullapour said that the state’s brazen and callous murders “shocked the world” into action.
“I thank the West and Israel. I wish them to continue until the end of the Islamic regime,” he concluded, speaking of Operation Roaring Lion and Operation Epic Fury.
“The world will never be at peace as long as there is an Islamic Republic. They are religious extremists and export revolution and terrorism. They are fighting for the disappearance of Israel and humanity,” he said.
While the Abdullapour family was deprived of the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved one at a funeral or gravesite, others are deprived of answers or any sense of closure altogether.
Ardalan Mama has not heard from his father since November 18, 2022, when security forces detained Osman Mama for allegedly participating in the Women, Life, Freedom protests in Bukan.
Osman had not been demonstrating but was returning from his brother’s home, though Mama had been giving medical assistance to those wounded by the regime, including uninvolved persons harmed like his mother.
The protests broke out in 2022 after security forces murdered 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini for failing to cover her hair to the regime’s standards.
The UN Human Rights Council’s independent international fact-finding mission on Iran found the regime was responsible for egregious human rights violations under international law in its response to the protests, including unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, and enforced disappearances.
These abuses were disproportionately carried out against women and members of ethnic minority groups. It is estimated that at least 551 protesters were killed, including 68 children, with thousands more detained or wounded.
Asked to describe his father, Mama said Osman was a simple family man, proud of his Kurdish heritage.
He enjoyed reading and writing poetry, spending time in nature, and making toy swords and birds for his children with the skills he developed as a carpenter. He enjoyed a peaceful life and was not among those demonstrating in the street.
“The protests in Bukan were very intense. People were resisting the armed forces of the Islamic Republic with empty hands. The forces were shooting at the people, and many people were injured,” Mama told the Post.
“My father contacted me and told me to take him home, and I told him that the situation was very tense, and please be patient until morning,” he said.
Osman didn’t wait until morning to return to his two sons and was abducted by security officials that night. The arrest came 50 days after Mama’s mother was shot in the face by IRGC guards despite not being involved in the protests.
On September 29, the family was traveling in a private car when the guards opened fire, causing glass and shrapnel to fly everywhere.
“Several bullets hit my car. The rear guard of the car was destroyed, and a shotgun bullet hit my mother in the head, severing her right ear,” Mama recounted, explaining how his mother was left with hundreds of pieces of shrapnel in her body.
The Post was shown images of his mother’s wounds and provided with medical records, which verified Mama’s claim.
At first, Mama’s mother was taken to Bukan Hospital, but they were denied treatment. The next day, they took her to Saqqez Hospital, where her ear was transplanted, but they were unable to remove the bullet fragments from her face, something that continues to cause her pain to this day.
At the hospital, the family was interrogated by a plainclothes officer every two hours, who repeatedly asked them, “Who shot at you? Why were you outside? Where were you targeted?” Mama recounted.
“After we took my mother home, the IRGC Intelligence Department called us and told us to go to the intelligence department, threatening, ‘if you don’t come, we will come and take you.’ Then they started threatening us that we had no right to take any photos or films,” he added.
Mama and his mother remain in Iraq now, where they are waiting for a humanitarian visa and hope to build a new home in a country with the healthcare facilities that could finally remove the shrapnel.
“With the change of seasons, my mother’s headaches become more severe, her head gets infected, and her eyes water. Her face has lost its symmetry and is completely deformed,” he said.
Mama began speaking to humanitarian organizations, hoping international pressure would lead to answers on where his dad was. Instead, the regime arrested, tortured, and threatened him.
“They took me to small rooms measuring 2×1.5 meters, where there was only a chair and a table for the interrogator and a chair for the detainee. The rooms had windows placed behind the interrogator. The doors of the rooms could not be opened from the inside, and neither could the window,” he testified.
They questioned him about who was reporting on his father’s disappearance, and he would deny knowing. Every time he answered “I don’t know,” Mama said that “several people would come in and beat me and repeat their questions.”
“They didn’t care, they just hit me with fists and kicks,” he said. “Then, the interrogator started threatening us, saying that if we told anyone that he treated us badly, he would arrest me again.”
The family still has no information about the status of Osman, though Mama believes his father is still alive. He told the Post that the Kurdistan Human Rights Network has supported them in filing a complaint to the Committee on Enforced Disappearances.
Even from Iraq, the regime has continued to torment the family. Their home was destroyed by an IRGC missile last month.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is a dictatorial regime that has destroyed the foundation of my family twice. Until it is overthrown, no person or country in the region is safe,” Mama shared.
“As long as the Islamic Republic is in place, the countries of the region and the people of Iran will not find peace. The people of Iran are very honorable, and the country of Iran is a beautiful country that is now being destroyed under the Islamic Republic regime.
“I ask all the people of the world and human rights organizations to help us find my father and treat my mother, and not leave us alone. Be our voice,” he concluded.
While Osman was detained just for being near the protests, others demonstrated, knowing the regime would crack down violently on the vigils for Mahsa Amini.
Farydoun Mahmoudi knew that his video call with his brother, Farhad Mahmoudi, in September 2022, would be the last time the two would ever speak. Born only two years apart, the brothers remained close even after Mahmoudi left Iran and spoke frequently.
Three days after learning that Amini, who was from the same city of Saqqez, was killed, Farydoun took to the streets to protest her murder.
“The last time we spoke, he said he would go out on the street tomorrow, and that he would be murdered that day. I didn’t know when he was killed because on that day, the internet was cut off in Kurdistan, specifically Saqqez,” Mahmoudi said, describing how he only had confirmation of his brother’s death when the internet returned a day later.
“My life changed 360 degrees from that day until now, and it was as if I had been born a different person. Everything changed, and my serious struggle with this regime began,” he added.
Farydoun was killed by a shotgun fired at close range, leaving behind his parents, brother, and five-year-old son. Regime authorities refused to investigate the 32-year-old’s death, claiming it was impossible to know which member of the security forces opened fire on the crowd.
Though devastated, Mahmoudi told the Post he has been too angry to shed tears for his brother and will wait until “the day this regime is destroyed and the people are free.”
“This regime has killed everyone, from a two-year-old child to a 70-year-old man. In recent months alone, thousands of people who wanted an end to this tyranny have lost their lives. Not just us, but the entire Middle East and the world have been scarred by this regime,” he reflected.
While Farydoun was known for his love of soccer and cooking, he became more active in social justice efforts as he aged. His childhood was colored by the poverty he experienced, exacerbated by the discrimination against the Kurdish people in Iran, and the issues weighed heavily on him.
Under the 1985 Gozinesh process, also known as the Selection Law, religious and ethnic minorities are restricted from civil life, as only those who are devout Muslims loyal to the Islamic Republic’s ideology can attend university or obtain public sector jobs
Through this systematic discrimination, a disproportionate number of Kurds suffer from extreme poverty and are forced to move to Iraq or relocate away from their communities for work, where they often find limited opportunities as a result of language barriers and culturally ingrained racism against those who don’t follow Shia Islam.
“Before Mahsa, we had already talked about [activism],” his brother said. “He had a simple explanation [for why he was protesting]: ‘As long as the Islamic regime rules over the people, it will either kill them or torture them…’”
Despite the frequent conversations and continuous oppression, Mahmoudi said he “never thought that one day my brother would be killed by a bullet fired by the government under whose shadow we lived.”
The Mahmoudi family was able to bury Farydoun, though Mahmoudi shared his sadness that many others were deprived of even that basic right.
Mahmoudi’s pride in his brother was apparent in his adopting the activist spirit Farydoun once enjoyed. He boasted to the Post that the protests his brother participated in were “unparalleled” at the time and helped the Iranian people gather international support.
He warned that negotiations with Iran would be “considered a victory” for the “cancerous tumor” that is the regime and asserted that, though he is deeply saddened by the cost of civilian lives in the war, it must continue.
“Western societies and governments and the world must know that the regime is a terrorist group,” he advised. “The governments of the world must join hands to eradicate this cancerous tumor from the face of the earth…
“The international community should not appease this regime and enter into dialogue that will perpetuate it, because in the not-so-distant future, this government will once again become a danger to the region and the world and will have the ability to rebuild itself.”
Sharareh Ghorbani had a different stance. She told the Post that she wanted to see Iran have a free and democratic future, but that she couldn’t support war, even against the regime that murdered her husband.
Ghorbani and Hayday Ghorbani married in 1997, when she was 14, just above the legal minimum age of 13. As is common in Kamyaran, the two, who were cousins, were matched in an arranged marriage.
Despite this, Ghorbani described her husband as loving and attentive, both to their two sons and to their wider community, where he regularly volunteered.
When she spoke with the Post, it was nearly five years since his execution. He was put to death for his membership in PDKI.
“I cannot recover from this grief,” she said, describing a prolonged struggle with depression since his death. She added that the stress surrounding his execution and the arrest of another family member led to the loss of her third pregnancy.
Ghorbani was among the few families permitted a final visit. Two weeks before his execution, Hayday urged her to take care of herself and their sons, apologizing that he would not be there to support them.
In the months that followed, security forces repeatedly summoned and interrogated her and her sons, who were minors at the time, deepening her fears for their safety. Her sons have since relocated to the United Kingdom.
Ghorbani said she hopes to return to Iran one day, but only when people can live there freely.
