Brother Draco

Iran: The islamic regime beat 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh to death with batons, then called it suicide and coerced her mother into repeating the story on state TV. Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old from Karaj, died on September 23, 2022. She was a YouTuber and poet who had openly criticized the compulsory hijab. After Amini’s death, she wrote a protest poem condemning the killing and violence against women, posted it on Telegram on September 20, 2022, and joined the protests. She was buried under security, and the family was not allowed to see her body. Around 10 a.m. that morning, the family was handed her body at the Behesht-e Sakineh Cemetery mortuary, already washed and wrapped in a shroud. Security officials did not let the family see her, and her mother only glimpsed her face by pulling back the shroud moments before burial. The official story is that she jumped. On October 6, Alborz province chief justice Hossein Fazeli Harikandi called her death a suicide by a fall from a great height. He said police reported it to the on-call prosecutor at around 12:20 a.m. on September 24, and claimed she climbed to a fifth-floor rooftop at her grandmother’s home, crossed to the next building, and jumped. He also claimed she had previously tried to kill herself with pills. He dismissed reports that security forces killed her as claims by “hostile media” and said she died in an area untouched by unrest. The official story contradicts itself. The judiciary said emergency services arrived shortly after midnight, but state TV showed a photo of a girl’s body on the ground in daylight. State TV said the incident happened at her mother’s residence, while the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency placed it at her grandmother’s home in Azimieh. Her death certificate lists shock due to trauma and multiple blows, alongside blunt force trauma from a fall from height. Her mother was threatened into repeating the suicide story on camera. Security officials threatened her mother, Masoumeh Hamidipour, that she would never see her son Sina again unless she confirmed the suicide account. She was filmed repeating it twice: on October 8, 2022, for Tasnim, and on October 11 on state TV’s main evening news. In the first video, she is sitting in an interrogation room at the Criminal Investigation Department. Security forces made the release of her body conditional on the family publicly saying she had fallen from a rooftop. Iran Human Rights reported that her mother had been told at the prosecutor’s office to say her daughter fell from a building, and refused each time. Iran International reported that some people disputed whether the woman in one of the state videos was her mother at all. Her online accounts were deleted or altered. The authorities never returned her phone, her Instagram account was deleted without explanation, and several of her Telegram posts were deleted or edited to add fabricated statements suggesting suicidal thoughts, according to Radio Farda. Her relatives were summoned, and their lawyer was blocked. Her legal guardian and both of her uncles were repeatedly summoned to court and the Criminal Investigation Department, where they were pressured into forced confessions and told to file complaints against people who challenged the suicide story. Iran Human Rights reported that her mother, brother, and uncle were being summoned by security agencies every day, while the family’s lawyer was denied access to the case. Her classmates later replaced Khamenei’s photo in their classroom with her portrait.