Iran International
Hooshmand Ramezanipour spoke softly from a refugee camp in Serbia, his voice low and cautious. “There are smugglers here,” he said. “To be honest, I have died and been resurrected many times — both inside Iran and here.”
The 39-year-old Iranian political activist said he was tortured and nearly killed by other migrants after being recognized for wearing a T-shirt with the Israeli flag and advocating for a pro-Israel rally while living in refugee camp in Northern Greece.
“I curse myself a thousand times a day,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t run away and died right then and there so I wouldn’t have to endure all this pain now.”
Ramezanipour said the refugees, whose nationality he withheld to guard against reprisals, shot him in the leg and held him down as they dripped molten plastic on his stomach.
A mechanic by trade, he fled Iran in 2016 after years of activism alongside reformist figures such as Mohammad Nourizad and later volunteered for a Persian-language Israeli radio outlet in Turkey.
'Admirer of Israel'
Ramezanipour spoke to Iran International from hiding, saying he still fears his attackers could find him.
His ordeal, he said, began after he fled Turkey in 2023, where members of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves group which opposes migration had threatened him.
Transferred to the Kavala refugee camp in northern Greece, he said he saw anti-Israel slogans scrawled on the walls and campaigns in the city supporting Hamas for several months recently.
Ramezanipour said he has long admired the arch-foe of the Iranian theocratic rulers he had fled, saying many in the region had been "brainwashed" against Israel.
The devastating Israeli ground incursion into Gaza which local medics say killed over 67,000 people after Hamas attacks on Israel killed over 1,200 Israelis and captured over 200 others has stoked sharp criticism of Israel, especially in the Muslim world.
“I decided to get an Israeli flag and enter the camp with it,” he recalled. “At first no one bothered me, but when the camp director saw me, he ordered the security guards to take it away. I refused.”
The next day, he was summoned and forced to hand it over. “The director even threatened me, saying that either I would leave the camp or he would — that there wasn’t room for both of us,” he said.
Tens of thousands of asylum seekers languish in semi-lawless camps in and around Europe hoping to achieve safety and prosperity outside their homelands.
Western immigration authorities typically favor asylum applicants who are able to demonstrate they face plausible harm for their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, political views or activism.
Pro-Israel rally bid in Greek refugee camp
Iran International has reviewed the paperwork Ramezanipour filed to local Greek authorities requesting official permission to hold a public rally near the refugee camp in late July. The rally never materialized.
The network has also examined medical documents confirming that he sustained second- and third-degree burns with severe infection risk and signs of torture, as well as a Serbian police report showing that misdemeanor charges against him for illegal residency were dropped due to his cooperation with authorities and the circumstances of his case.
The documents did not elaborate on the alleged attack, perpetrators or potential motives.
Iran International has additionally seen photos and videos provided by Ramezanipour showing his current condition and the poor state of the camp where he is living.
As threats against him intensified inside the camp, Ramezanipour decided to leave. He said unknown men had begun following him after his failed attempt to organize the rally.
“One night around two in the morning, a car stopped in front of me,” he recalled about the early hours of September 28. “A man claimed to be a police officer and asked for my ID. Then someone shouted, ‘Don’t let this bastard escape—catch him!’”
Fearing for his life, he fled Greece with the help of smugglers and crossed into Serbia. “I thought I was finally safe,” he said. But in the Serbian border town of Loznica, he was taken to an abandoned factory filled with other migrants.
'The same bastard'
Inside, one of the men pulled out a phone, looked at a photo, then at him. “It was the picture of me wearing the Israeli flag T-shirt,” he said. “He compared it to my face and told the others, ‘This is the same bastard.’”
“They tied my hands behind my back and stuffed a cloth into my mouth,” he said. “They melted plastic and poured it on my body. They shot me in the thigh."
Ramezanipour eventually got help from local villagers who called the police.
“The police were kind” he said.
Ramezanipour said he identified four of the fifteen men who attacked him. Police told him the suspects had fled to Bosnia, but one officer later confided that Serbian and Bosnian police “don’t have good relations,” making arrests unlikely.
Mahshid Nazemi, an advocate with the refugee network Iran House, said Ramezanipour reached out to her through refugee contacts seeking help.
“Many of them find us when they have nowhere else to turn,” she said. “His wounds are infected and he’s in constant pain. He can’t walk without help, and he lives in fear they’ll find him again," Nazemi told Iran International.
She said his story is one of many that show the dangers refugees face in Europe. “Refugees are beaten, raped and pushed back across borders,” she said. “When they drown, Turkey blames Greece and Greece blames Turkey. No one takes responsibility.”
From his camp in Serbia, Ramezanipour says he still wakes at night, reliving the pain and fearing his attackers will find him again.
