Wednesday and Thursday mark six months since the two-day bloody crackdown against nationwide protests in Iran, when the Iranian security forces responded with force. The retaliation from the Iranian government resulted in over 30,000 Iranian citizens’ deaths.
The Jerusalem Post gathered testimonies from the relatives and friends of many of the victims of the massacre.
Among the victims was Mostafa Adgarsalehi, an Iranian citizen of Lur-Bakhtiari origin, who was not afraid to dream of change for his people and to fight for that future.
This is his story.
Mostafa Adgarsalehi
Mostafa Adgarsalehi, 41, lived in Yazdanshahr, Isfahan, in central Iran, when the nationwide mass demonstrations began.
On January 9, the second day of the massacres, Adgarsalehi took to the streets alongside thousands of Iranian citizens in a demonstration against a corrupt Islamic regime.
That day, he was critically wounded by two projectiles. After a two-day fight for his life in the hospital, he succumbed to his injuries, or, as his family described, a “coup de grâce” (tir-e khalas – a deliberate finishing shot) by the Islamic regime.
Security forces initially seized Adgarsalehi’s body. Only after signing off on the funeral being held under strict conditions and attended by a very small number of mourners was the body finally returned to his family ten days later.
Instead of taking responsibility for the massacre, authorities tried to shift the blame onto the United States and Israel, Adgarsalehi’s family wrote in his testimony.
“He wanted to raise his voice for justice and express his profound contempt for what he viewed as a terrorist dictatorship that had subjected the Iranian people to continuous oppression through extreme mismanagement, mass unemployment, and political, economic, and cultural collapse,” his family told The Jerusalem Post.
In addition to his courageous character, his family described him as a “highly educated man” who was an engineer and also held a master’s degree in English Translation.
“We expect the international community to recognize this regime as completely illegitimate, hold its leaders accountable for their crimes, and help the Iranian people free themselves once and for all from the tyranny of this regime,” Adgarsalehi’s family stated to the Post.
