According to a source close to the family, relatives of a child who died during protests in Iran have been pressured into giving false statements.
On September 20, Nika Shakarami, 16, vanished from Tehran after telling a friend she was being pursued by authorities.
Wednesday night, her aunt Atash was shown saying on state television: “Nika was killed falling from a building.”
As he spoke out against the turmoil on television, someone appeared to whisper to him, “Say it, you scoundrel!”
According to the source, both of these “forced confessions” were obtained “after prolonged interrogations and threats that more family members would be killed.”
Authorities imprisoned Atash and Nika’s uncle Mohsen when Atash spoke to the media and posted comments about her niece’s passing online. The insider claims that the broadcasted statements were recorded before they were broadcast.
Before being detained on Sunday, Atash told that the Revolutionary Guards had informed her that Nika would be held in their custody for five days before being turned over to jail guards.
According to the judiciary, Nika entered a building where eight construction workers were present the night she vanished, and the following morning, her body was discovered outdoors in the yard.
According to a post-mortem report quoted by state media on Wednesday, Nika suffered “many fractures… in the pelvis, head, upper and lower limbs, arms, and legs, which indicate that the individual was thrown from a height,” according to Tehran judiciary official Mohammad Shahriari.
This, he claimed, showed that the protests had nothing to do with her death.
But according to a death certificate obtained and issued by a cemetery in the capital, she passed away after sustaining “many injuries caused by blows with a hard object.”
According to Atash, Nika’s Instagram and Telegram accounts were also removed after she vanished. It is common knowledge that Iranian security forces ask captives to grant them access to their social media accounts in order to erase the accounts or specific content.
Additionally, Atash was seen on state television on Wednesday night stating that her niece’s body had been discovered outside the structure indicated by the judiciary, despite earlier claims to the contrary made by her and other family members.
The body of Nika was discovered 10 days after she went missing at the morgue of a prison facility, according to the family, who claim that they were only given a brief opportunity to identify her by looking at her face by officials. Before being detained, Atash claimed that she had not visited the morgue.
On Sunday, the day before Nika would have turned 17, her body was moved by her family to Khorramabad, the western city where her father was born.
According to a person close to them, the family opted to forgo a public funeral under pressure from the authorities. Security personnel “stole” Nika’s body from Khorramabad, the source claimed, and surreptitiously buried it in the nearby village of Veysian, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) away.
In allusion to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, hundreds of demonstrators subsequently assembled in Khorramabad’s cemetery and yelled anti-government chants, including “death to the tyrant.”
The turmoil that started last month after the passing of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was held by the morality police for allegedly breaking the Islamic Republic’s stringent hijab law, led to the deaths of several young female protesters, including Nika.
Hadis Najafi, 22, was reportedly shot and killed by security personnel on September 21 while participating in a protest in Karaj, a city west of Tehran, according to her relatives. Authorities allegedly asked her father to state that she had a heart attack when she passed away.
Sarina Esmailzadeh, 16, died after being severely hit on the head with a baton by security personnel during protests in Karaj on September 23, according to a source cited by Amnesty International. Additionally, the source informed the human rights organisation that security and intelligence personnel had harassed the girl’s family in an effort to get them to keep quiet.
Before she passed away, Sarina recorded several recordings that have since been shared on social media. After clearing a few school tests, she remarks in one recording, “Nothing feels better than freedom.”
