Amirhossein Saidi’s father had encouraged him to stay at home. The 19-year-old computer science student was still recovering from the illness as the protests sweeping across Iran became more dangerous by the day.
But Saidi was determined. “Adrenaline rose in my blood,” he told his family. “I’m flying. I want to fly tonight.”
Saidi was shot in the face on a Tehran street during a brutal crackdown on protests by Iranian security forces, and by the next evening he had died in his father’s arms, according to relatives in Iran who spoke anonymously to CNN for fear of retaliation.
Thousands were killed within days in early January. But for Saidi’s family, like many others, the ordeal did not end with his death. They say authorities tried to hide the truth about how he and other protesters were killed.
CNN, with the help of human rights groups and activists, has gathered testimony from more than a dozen families who say they were pressured to fabricate the circumstances of their loved one’s death.
Intimidating protesters’ relatives is a tactic Iranian authorities have long used to suppress opposition. But rights groups say the practice became institutionalized after the January crackdown as the regime sought to shore up its claims that security forces were protecting the country from U.S. and Israeli-backed agents.
In many cases, families said they were pressured to register their loved ones as members of the Basij paramilitary volunteer militia, a state-backed force tasked with suppressing protests. Others were instructed to describe them as “martyrs” to the Islamic Republic who had been killed by terrorist organizations or foreign agents. Others said they were told that a relative had died from a drug overdose or an accident.
After Saidi’s death, relatives said security forces attended a family memorial service and then went to his parents’ home and threatened to kill their other child if they did not cooperate.
“They told Amirhossein’s father that he was talking too much because he had said that his son had been shot in front of him,” the relative said.
Relatives say the family was told: “Your child must be announced as a martyr and you cannot speak out anywhere.” “Don’t say anything unless you want the fate of other children to be the same as this one.”
First-hand accounts of these intimidation tactics are difficult to obtain from inside Iran, where many are too afraid to speak out against the regime. CNN examined text and audio messages sent by multiple families pointing to widespread use of coercion.
In one case, the father of a 13-year-old boy was told to declare his son a member of Basij forces or pay around 6 billion rials, about $4,000 to $5,000 depending on fluctuating exchange rates, according to messages sent to activist group Iranwire and seen by CNN. The minimum wage in Iran is only around $110 per month.
The boy, Abolfazl Vahid Geselce Meydan, lost his mother to the coronavirus when he was nine years old, then dropped out of school to work as an apprentice shoemaker, hoping to one day earn enough money to buy foreign-made sneakers. Abolfazl was among the thousands of people who took to the streets in Tehran on January 8 to protest against deteriorating living conditions. His relatives said he was shot in the neck, as seen in images of his body seen by CNN.
One relative said his family is still receiving calls asking them to allow visits to their home by officials who claim that “Zionists” killed him and who carry the flag of Imam Hussein, a revered seventh-century figure in Shiite Islam and a potent symbol of martyrdom in the regime’s ideology.
Abolfazl’s family has so far resisted intimidation tactics, saying they were able to negotiate a lower amount due to their connections. But for many other families enduring Iran’s harsh cost-of-living crisis, they had no choice but to accept.
The family of Fahimeh Ajam, 29, who was killed during a protest in Azadshahr, northeastern Golestan province, also said they were threatened by officials, religious leaders and security forces who forced them to blame terrorists rather than state forces for her death.
“There were two cars outside the yard with armed men inside,” a relative said in a text message shared by IranWire with CNN. “They came to our house and said that terrorists had killed Ms. Fahime and that she should be declared a ‘martyr.’”
Officials said they later called her brother and “warned him to be careful about what he said and not to create trouble for himself, or even the grave could be raided.”
Some families outside Iran have been able to speak more freely about what their loved ones have endured since the crackdown began.
Parviz Afshari’s 17-year-old son Sam was shot in the hip on January 8th on the street in Karaj. Sam’s father, who is now based in Germany, told CNN that Sam was taken to a hospital, where he was shot dead by state security forces while wearing an oxygen mask and on an IV drip in what they called a “death blow.”
Mr Afshari said that when his wife went to retrieve Sam’s body, he suffered severe injuries to his face and had to identify it with a tattoo on his chest. Security forces asked his wife to sign a document stating that Sam was a Basij member who had been killed by terrorists.
“At that time, my wife, her sister and brother protested and even fired warning shots into the air to calm the situation,” Afshari said.
His wife continued to refuse and eventually allowed Sam to be buried, but because the cemetery was overcrowded, Sam had to be buried in the same grave with another young protester in a separate location.
Since Sam was buried, plainclothes police have visited his parents’ home numerous times and threatened his father.
There is still debate over the full-scale crackdown on Iranian protests that took place from late December to early January.
President Donald Trump recently claimed that 32,000 people have been killed in protests, a much higher number than previously reported. The US-based Human Rights Defenders News Agency (HRANA) said at least 6,488 protesters had been killed and was working to verify thousands more incidents.
The Iranian government has acknowledged more than 3,000 deaths and published a list of names, but blames most of the killings on “insurgents” who are part of an alleged Israeli-led organized conspiracy.
CNN has contacted the Iranian government to ask about the claims made by the protesters’ relatives. Officials and security forces attempted to coerce them into making false statements about the circumstances of their deaths.
The exact number of families who have been pressured to falsify death records is unknown, but Mahmoud Amily Moghaddam of the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights Group estimates that the tactic was used in more cases involving male protesters, which his group was able to document.
“What is striking this time is how systematic and openly brutal the pressure has become,” said Amily Moghaddam. “It’s not just about forcing silence on families; this pattern suggests an intent to humiliate and use intimidation and degrading treatment to project power, break resistance and send a broader message of fear to society.”
Moussa Barjin, a human rights lawyer based outside Iran who defends protesters and their families, told CNN that he has worked on several cases in which authorities tried to construct false narratives, primarily by pressuring families to label victims as Basij members.
“We have received reports that in some cities, authorities have taken it upon themselves to bury bodies in undisclosed locations if families have refused,” he said. “A few days later they informed the family that the burial had taken place.”
“When a problem is this widespread in terms of numbers and geography, you can say it’s systemic,” Bergin added.
According to Barzin, the campaign to manipulate the deaths of protesters is a propaganda tool of the Iranian state. “There are armed groups claiming to be protesters, killing our troops and wanting to claim that we are the victims,” he said.
Many families say they were pressured to appear on state media, praising their relatives in heavily edited interviews set to sad music and sometimes accompanied by AI-generated reenactments of their final moments.
Saidi’s relatives say this is all a performance for the cameras by a ruthless regime.
“When their own people took to the streets empty-handed to protest against rising prices and other grievances, they massacred them.”
