Wounded protester missing for 33 days shot dead in custody, source says

Ali Heydari, a 20-year-old Iranian protester wounded and arrested during demonstrations in Mashhad on January 8, was shot in the head and killed in detention about a month later, a source close to his family told Iran International.

Heydari was injured by live ammunition in his leg during protests on January 8 and taken away alive by security forces. After 33 days of complete silence about his whereabouts, his body was handed to his family on February 9.

Authorities told his father by phone that his son had “died during the protests” and that his body had been kept in morgue for over a month.

Family members who saw the body dispute that account.

They told Iran International that signs of severe beating, a broken nose and, most critically, a bullet wound to the left side of his forehead indicate he was tortured during detention and later killed with a close-range shot to the head.

Two additional visible signs, they said, strongly suggested that only days – not weeks – had passed since his death.

Live fire and arrest

Heydari was born on March 27, 2005, in the village of Virani in Shandiz and lived in Mashhad. He worked in a woodworking shop. Had he not been killed in mid-February, he would have turned 21 within weeks.

On the evening of January 8, he joined thousands of others protesting on Haft-e Tir Boulevard in Mashhad. Witnesses said security forces began firing at crowds gathered near the local police station around 9 p.m.

A protester who survived the crackdown told Iran International that a live round struck Heydari in the leg early in the shooting.

“He lost balance and fell. There was heavy bleeding. We couldn’t pull him back,” the witness said. “Security forces reached him, lifted him and dragged him away.”

Heydari’s mobile phone fell from his pocket as he collapsed. The witness retrieved it before fleeing.

33 days of enforced disappearance

From the moment of his arrest until the early hours of February 9, his family received no official information about his location, medical condition or legal status.

After learning from the witness that Heydari had been wounded and detained, the family searched for him across hospitals, detention centers, courts and morgues. Authorities – including the Intelligence Ministry, the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit and local police – denied knowledge of his case.

The systematic denial of information about a detainee seized in plain sight amounts to enforced disappearance under international law. In practice, it left the family in prolonged uncertainty, cut off from any legal recourse and unaware of whether he was alive or dead.

Such denial also removes scrutiny – a condition that rights groups say can facilitate torture and extrajudicial killing.

The call from the morgue

In the early hours of February 9, officers from the investigative unit in the Shandiz area phoned Heydari’s father and instructed him to go to the Behesht-e Reza cemetery in Mashhad to identify and collect his son’s body.

When the father asked what had happened, he was told his son had “died during the protests” and that his body had been in morgue for more than a month.

Family members who viewed the body said there were visible bruises and a fractured nose, consistent with severe beating. The gunshot wound to the forehead, they said, appeared to have been fired from close range, likely with a handgun.

They also pointed to physical details suggesting that Heydari had been alive long after his January 8 arrest. He had visited a barber that Thursday and had only faint stubble at the time of his detention, they said, but facial hair had grown noticeably by the time his body was returned. They added that the body’s condition did not align with a death that had occurred a month earlier.

Together, they say, these signs contradict the official explanation and indicate he was killed days before his body was released.

Burial under watch

Heydari was buried in his hometown of Virani. The funeral drew large numbers of residents, alongside a significant presence of plainclothes security agents.

Agents attempted to detain several participants during the burial but were prevented by resistance from mourners, according to attendees. The following day, security forces warned the family against holding a memorial ceremony. The gathering ultimately proceeded after mediation by relatives.

Silence and risk

Shahram Sadidi, a Mashhad-born political activist based in the UK who first publicized Heydari’s disappearance, told Iran International that public unawareness may have made it easier for authorities to act without scrutiny.

“If news of his detention had spread earlier, public pressure might have prevented this outcome,” he said.

Field reports, Sadidi said, indicate that more than a thousand people – possibly several thousand – were detained in Mashhad during and after the January 8 protests, with little information released about most of them.

“Families are often threatened that speaking out will harm their loved ones,” he said. “Fear keeps many silent, and that silence creates space for abuse.”

Heydari’s case, marked by live-fire injury, disappearance and a fatal gunshot in custody, underscores the risks facing detainees held beyond public view – and the consequences of 33 days in which no authority acknowledged where he was.

What the 1991 uprising in Iraq can teach US and Iran

Feb 12, 2026, 21:25 GMT

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Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

About a month ago, US President Donald Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting and take over institutions, saying that “help is on the way.”

Since then, the US military presence around Iran has expanded steadily, and many Iranians openly call for American military action against the Islamic Republic.

Yet some of Trump’s advisers draw cautionary parallels between a potential strike on Iran and the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, warning against another protracted and costly war.

There is, however, another Middle Eastern precedent—one that both Iran and the United States would be wise to examine closely: the 1991 Shia and Kurdish uprising in Iraq. It was a revolt sparked in part by American encouragement but crushed after the United States did not intervene on behalf of the protesters.

US call for uprising

On Feb. 15, 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.”

His message was broadcast into Iraq via television and radio. Coalition aircraft dropped leaflets urging Iraqi soldiers and civilians to “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Saddam Hussein and his aides.”

The call came weeks after the US-led coalition had launched its campaign to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Shia communities in southern Iraq and Kurdish groups in the north rose up against Saddam.

The uprisings were fueled by deep public anger over Saddam’s military adventurism — from the long war with Iran to the invasion of Kuwait — which had imposed immense human and economic costs on Iraqi society.

Protests began in Basra and quickly spread to Najaf, Karbala and Nasiriyah. Shia rebels and defecting soldiers attacked security forces and government buildings. Baath Party offices were seized, officials were killed, prisoners were freed.

Within roughly two weeks, 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces were effectively outside the central government’s control.

It was a dramatic advance — but it did not last.

The collapse of the uprising

The rebellion ended in one of the bloodiest crackdowns in modern Iraqi history. Its failure stemmed from a combination of factors: American hesitation to intervene, Saddam’s extensive use of force and deep divisions among the opposition — a combination that could, in a different form, reappear in Iran.

Despite overwhelming military superiority in the Persian Gulf, the Bush administration chose not to enter a new confrontation with Saddam. There were fears of “another Vietnam,” with American troops drawn into a prolonged deadly conflict.

Bush publicly called for Saddam’s removal but remained wary of what might follow. One concern was the “Lebanonization” of Iraq — the prospect of the rise of Iranian-backed Shia forces in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, opposition groups inside Iraq — Shia factions, Kurds, nationalists and others — failed to unify under a coherent command structure. The opportunity to conquer Baghdad slipped away.

The Gulf War ceasefire allowed Saddam breathing room. A regime many believed was on the brink of collapse recovered quickly. Relying on the Republican Guard — which had remained in the war largely intact — Saddam launched a counteroffensive.

Although parts of Iraq were placed under no-fly zones, Saddam exploited a loophole: helicopters were not barred. He used them to attack rebels, and coalition forces did not intervene to stop those assaults.

The Republican Guard shelled residential neighborhoods indiscriminately, conducted house-to-house arrests and carried out mass executions. Chemical weapons were used against some rebel-held areas. Even those who sought refuge in religious shrines in Najaf and Karbala were not spared.

Estimates suggest that between 30,000 and 60,000 Shia in the south and around 20,000 Kurds in the north were killed. Roughly 2 million people were displaced.

Lessons for the US and Iran

The Iraqi uprising offers several lessons for policymakers in Washington, and for Iranians.

First, the international community often underestimates a regime’s capacity for internal violence. Military weakness abroad does not necessarily translate into fragility at home.

A government that perceives its survival to be at stake may show restraint toward foreign adversaries while unleashing far harsher tactics domestically. Even an army battered in external war can regroup internally, close ranks and act with renewed intensity.

Saddam’s regime had been defeated by an international coalition, yet it retained loyal security structures, a functioning chain of command and the willingness to use extreme force against its own citizens.

At such moments, any external concession or diplomatic maneuver can be repurposed as an instrument of internal consolidation.

A deal with Iran could give the ruling elite a chance to regroup and unleash a new wave of repression against its own people.

For opposition movements, strategic cohesion matters. Agreement on minimum political goals, unity of command and preparation for a potential power vacuum can be decisive.

Victory does not arrive simply because a regime appears weakened. In Iraq, rebels went so far as to appoint local governors in areas they controlled — but the new order collapsed swiftly. Divisions within the opposition ultimately strengthened the existing power structure at a decisive moment.

At the same time, global leaders should recognize that threats alone are insufficient. If a foreign power seeks to alter the balance of power, it must understand that displays of force without the intention to use it can carry profound and unintended consequences.