This page keeps the memory of 17 people who lost their lives in suspicious circumstances; deaths that were never clarified. The earliest name in this list dates back to 25 Aban 1393 and the latest to 7 Esfand 1402. This page is about people whose death the sources described neither as execution, nor as being killed in a protest, nor as an evident death in detention, but as a death whose questions have remained unanswered. Here we make no judgement about the cause of death of any of these 17 people; we only record that the sources considered their death suspicious and that no clear account of what happened is available.
What the list shows
These deaths are scattered across various years, but one year stands out: 1401 with 9 names, more than half of this entire page. The years 1396 and 1402 have 2 names each, and 1393, 1397 and 1404 have 1 name each. No day in this list has more than one name; days such as 25 Aban 1393, 19 Bahman 1396, 23 Dey 1397, 30 Aban 1401 and 3 Azar 1401 each hold one suspicious death.
Tehran and Urmia, each with 2 names, are the most frequent cities on this page, and Khoy, Sisakht, Ilam, Kamyaran, Kermanshah, Mahabad, Karaj, Lahijan, Kerman and Amol have 1 name each. West Azerbaijan with 4 names is at the top of the provinces. These deaths are seen from the northwest to the centre, and from Gilan and Mazandaran to Kerman. All those on this page were adults: the youngest of them was 18 years old and the oldest 63, and their median age is 33 years. There is no child under 18 in this list. There are 2 women in this list whose source mentioned that they were women.
Some names
For 3 of these 17 people, something about their life appears in our sources, and even that is short. Peyman Jasemi, 33 years old, from Ilam, who according to the source “held a doctorate in robotics,” lost his life on 3 Azar 1401; the source gives the cause as “as a result of suspicious poisoning.” Mohsen Jafari Rad, 36 years old, from Karaj, who according to the source “was a film director and journalist,” lost his life on 19 Dey 1401; the source says “he lost his life in a suspicious manner after being released from prison.” Maryam-ol-Sadat Arvin from Kerman was a member of the Kerman Bar Association and, according to the source, “took on the legal representation of those detained in the uprising”; on 17 Bahman 1401 she “died suddenly after being released from prison.”
Kavous Seyed-Emami, 63 years old, the oldest person in this list, lost his life on 19 Bahman 1396 in Tehran. An English-language source introduces him with two terms: “sociology professor” and “environmentalist”; a professor of sociology and an environmental activist. Babak Ghorbani, who lost his life on 25 Aban 1393, is the earliest name on this page and is described in the source with only one word: “wrestler”, that is, a wrestler. Behind each of these names is a family that perhaps still does not know how their loved one died.
About this list
The list of suspicious deaths is not complete. The real number of people who lost their lives in unclarified circumstances is higher, and many of these deaths were never recorded in any source; we list only a name that has a source. The names on this page come from the Iran Human Rights Society with 9 cases, iranhrs.org with 8 cases, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network with 5 cases, Persian Wikipedia with 4 cases and English Wikipedia with 2 cases. Every suspicious death on this page has at least one source, but some of them rest on only one report. If you knew one of these 17 people, or know something about how they died, share your memory, account or correction with us.