{"id":271495,"date":"2025-07-18T07:52:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T07:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/271495\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T07:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T07:52:18","slug":"our-silence-didnt-protect-him-daughter-pleads-for-father-on-death-row-in-iran-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/271495\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Our silence didn\u2019t protect him\u2019: daughter pleads for father on death row in Iran | Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late October 2022, as protests over 22-year-old Mahsa Amini\u2019s death in police custody<\/a> swept across Iran, Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri, a father of three, was racing through alleyways in the city of Bukan, in western Iran, carrying medical supplies to secret clinics where doctors treated<\/a> injured demonstrators in defiance of the state.<\/p>\n

Many of the wounded were too afraid to seek hospital care after reports<\/a> of secret police patrolling wards, interrogating patients and detaining injured protesters. By helping, Babamiri, a 47-year-old fruit and vegetable farmer, did not see himself as a revolutionary but simply as someone doing what was right, says his daughter, Zhino.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was intense firing from the forces and many protesters were injured. Everyone was helping each other and he volunteered,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told him not to talk about it openly on the phone, but he said it wasn\u2019t dangerous to help injured people. He just couldn\u2019t watch young people bleed in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nationwide protests erupted in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman detained over how she wore her hijab. Photograph: AFP\/Getty<\/p>\n

Babamiri was arrested in April 2023 and questioned by the ministry of intelligence in Bukan. Zhino, 24, says the family initially believed it was a brief interrogation. \u201cI was told [by relatives] not to worry and that he\u2019d be home soon,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Instead, he disappeared into solitary confinement and was initially denied access to a lawyer or contact with his family, the Kurdish Human Rights Network says.<\/p>\n

Last week, the family heard from a lawyer that Babamiri had been sentenced to death, along with four other Kurdish men<\/a>, after being charged with \u201carmed insurrection\u201d, \u201cleading and forming an armed group\u201d and \u201cespionage for Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Zhino, who lives in exile in Norway, says the family have been horrified by the verdict. \u201cWhen I heard about the death sentence, I was numb. When I called my grandmother and aunt, they were crying loudly. I have never heard them cry like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since his arrest, Zhino says several people have come forward with stories of how her father helped save their lives.<\/p>\n

Babamiri was arrested in April 2023 and has been held ever since. Photograph: Handout<\/p>\n

\u201cThese charges have been fabricated. My dad is a simple farmer who loves the people of his community and his family. He is a man who loves poems, likes watching news and enjoys working out,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In July 2024, Iranian state media aired a video showing Babamiri confessing, alongside other men charged in the same case. Human rights<\/a> groups say his conviction was based on a forced confession.<\/p>\n

In a letter later smuggled out of prison to the family, Babamiri described enduring more than four months of torture, including waterboarding, electric shocks, mock executions, and beatings that left him partially deaf.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first read the letter, I skipped the parts about torture. I couldn\u2019t bear to see what they did to him,\u201d says Zhino.<\/p>\n

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Amnesty International says Babamiri\u2019s arrest in 2023 came during a wave of detentions and executions of students and activists after the 2022 protests, part of the Iranian regime\u2019s campaign to instil fear and maintain control.<\/p>\n

Amnesty has also repeatedly documented<\/a> the regime\u2019s arbitrary arrest and detention of Kurds \u2013 an ethnic minority in Iran \u2013 based on perceived affiliations with opposition groups, often without credible evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad and the others are paying the price for simply being born Kurdish,\u201d says Zhino. \u201cThey told him no one would care if he died and that he\u2019d end up in a mass grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhino says members of her family still living in Iran<\/a> are fearful, and that she was advised by well-wishers to stay quiet after his arrest. \u201cI regret that. The silence didn\u2019t protect him and it almost broke me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She has become an outspoken campaigner, co-founding Daughters of Justice, a group of Iranians fighting to save their imprisoned fathers.<\/p>\n

In her most recent phone call with her father, he could not hear her. \u201cHe kept saying, \u2018Zhino, are you there?\u2019. I could hear him, but he couldn\u2019t hear me. I was crying. That moment haunts me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She now waits every day for news of his fate. \u201cI am scared to check my phone,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m terrified I\u2019ll wake up to read my father\u2019s name [on the death list].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In late October 2022, as protests over 22-year-old Mahsa Amini\u2019s death in police custody swept across Iran, Rezgar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-271495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114873155115047753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}