Reports detail last hours of young woman killed after Iran protests

An Iranian girl dressed in black stands on top of an overturned garbage can, waving her handkerchief as it is engulfed in flames, amid chants of “death to the dictator”.

A moment later, the video shows, she bends down to pick up another handkerchief, from a friend, which will also be burned in front of the protesters.

The girl was Nika Shahkarami, 16, from Tehran. A few hours after these scenes were recorded, on September 20, on videos obtained and verified exclusively by the CNN , Nika disappeared. And more than a week later, her family learned that she was dead.

Iranian officials claimed that Nika’s body was found at the back of a courtyard on the morning of September 21. Her mother did not have access to identify her until 8 days later. Security camera footage released by authorities with a date and time just after midnight, around the turn of the 20th to the 21st of September, showed the figure of a masked person, who they said was Nika, entering an uninhabited building. and still under construction in Tehran.

A Tehran prosecutor initially said she died after being thrown from the roof of the building and that her death “had no connection with the protests” that day, but despite apparently declaring her death a homicide, he did not say whether there were any suspects under investigation. State broadcasters reported that it “fell”, but did not provide evidence to support the claim that it was an accident.

On Wednesday, after the CNN asked the government to comment on evidence from this investigation, an Iranian media report quoted a Tehran prosecutor as saying Nika’s death was a suicide. Iranian authorities have yet to respond to repeated questions from the CNN about Nika’s death.

Authorities never explained why Nika would enter that building alone, and her mother said she doesn’t believe the masked person is her daughter. Her mother said she believes the teenager was killed by authorities, but officials never said whether Nika was in custody at any time.

Dozens of videos and eyewitness accounts obtained exclusively by the CNN indicate that Nika appears to have been pursued and detained by Iranian security forces that night. A key eyewitness, Ladan, said he saw Nika being taken into custody at the protest by “several large-bodied plainclothes security officers” who put her in a car.

Moments earlier, this witness, while stuck in Tehran traffic, filmed a video that allegedly shows the girl ducking behind a white car and screaming “tekoon nakhor, tekoon nakhor” – meaning “don’t move, don’t move” – to the driver before fleeing the brief shelter he gave him.

Seven people who knew Nika and spoke to the CNN confirmed that it was her. The same footage, recorded at 8:37 pm on September 20, also shows riot police on motorcycles patrolling the area.

“I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t,” Ladan said. “There were about 20 or 30 Basijis on motorcycles on the sidewalk,” said the witness, using the local name for the paramilitary organization that is at the forefront of the state’s crackdown on protesters.

“Nika was throwing rocks at them. I was scared and I even walked past her and said, ‘Watch out honey!’ because there were several plainclothes policemen on the streets passing cars looking for her. Fifty meters ahead they caught her,” added Ladan.

Ladan spoke to CNN after realizing that the teenager she had filmed and spoken to was the one whose death had been reported days later. THE CNN spoke exclusively with several witnesses who were at the Tehran protest on 20 September with the help of activist group 1500Tasvir.

Other videos, including handkerchief burnings, are evidence that Nika was at the forefront of protests earlier in the evening, before the crackdown — fearlessly, leading chants and throwing stones, according to multiple testimonies.

That would make it a target for security forces, including members of Iran’s feared Basij militia, as they began to invade the area around Tehran University and Keshavarz Avenue, where most protesters gathered that night, witnesses said. .

“I remember how brave she was because she went up in the dumpster and didn’t come down. She also burned her headscarf,” said Najmeh, a protester who was with Nika at the rally.

THE CNN is using pseudonyms for all witnesses named in this investigation due to the risk to their safety.

Police “fire tear gas and lead shots”

Students gathered near Laleh Park between 5pm and 6pm on September 20 to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died last month in state custody after being detained by morality police. of the country, supposedly because of the dress.

The scene has become familiar in Tehran in recent weeks: young people, mostly women, chanting “death to the dictator”, burning veils and throwing stones at security forces.

At one point, a garbage can was brought in and overturned to block the road. Nika jumped on it along with a few others, as video footage showed.

“She burned her headscarf and waved. I told her not to wave because you might get burned, just hold it until it burns,” said Nima, who was also at the protest and watched the events unfold. “So she took the tissues from the two friends who were with her and burned them too.”

In other videos from that night, geolocated and verified by CNN , Nika is shown throwing rocks at riot police forces. She is carrying a backpack and wearing a black mask and a hat on her head. Sounds that sound like gunshots can be heard.

From 7pm to 8pm, the crackdown by security forces intensified, witnesses said. “They were firing tear gas and lead shots and grabbing protesters. Almost all of us faced them and fled,” said Reza, another witness.

As riot police and Basij forces filled the streets, protesters began moving in all directions to escape the crackdown.

Another witness, Dina, who spent part of the protest walking alongside Nika, told CNN who saw her in front of a gas station not far from the University of Tehran, where the group of protesters had gathered after fleeing tear gas fired by security forces. Others managed to videotape the detainees by what appeared to be plainclothes police.

Reza added: “I saw with my own eyes the security forces beating women with batons, and they took many of them and took them to the police vans.”

It is in this context of extreme repression of the protest that Nika was last seen by the witnesses who spoke to the CNN – and nine more days would pass before his family was officially informed of his whereabouts. Videos verified and geolocated by CNN prove that the girl, in the last images of witnesses provided to the CNN showing her alive, was surrounded by security forces on three sides.

“I think Nika got trapped that night when we were on the run. Because she was very young,” Dina said.

conflicting reports

While Iranian authorities insist Nika died on the grounds of that uninhabited building, her mother Nasrin told Etemad, an independent Iranian newspaper, in an interview published on October 10 that she believes her daughter “was at the protests and was killed there.” ”.

Iranian security forces arrested eight people working in the building that Nika allegedly entered a few hours after eyewitnesses saw her at the Sept. 20 protests, the state-run Tasnim news agency reported on Oct. 4. Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi said a criminal court case had been opened and expressed his condolences to Nika’s family, state-run IRNA said.

Mohammad Shahriari, head of criminal prosecution for Tehran province, initially said Nika’s injuries corresponded to her being “thrown to the ground”, citing an autopsy that revealed multiple fractures in the area of ​​her pelvis, head, upper and lower limbs, hands , feet and hips, reported Tasnim.

He added that “an investigation showed that this incident had no connection with the protests. No bullet holes were found in the body.”

THE CNN repeatedly asked for comments from Iranian authorities on whether Nika was detained at the protests that night and whether other women were beaten and placed in police vehicles. THE CNN also asked the Tehran prosecutor about the status of the criminal investigation into Nika’s death. No response was received prior to the publication of this article.

On Wednesday, the online news channel Mizan, affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, published a report saying Nika’s death was a suicide, citing a Tehran prosecutor.

However, a death certificate first seen by BBC Persian and verified by CNN states that the young woman died of multiple injuries caused by blows with a hard object.

In the interview with Etemad, Nasrin said he had spoken to Nika on the phone many times the day she disappeared. Background noise during calls indicated that she and the other protesters were fleeing security forces, Nasrin added.

Nika also mentioned a few places she’s been – Enghelab Square, Keshavarz Boulevard and Valiasr Street – according to Nasrin, which correspond to videos geolocated by Nika. CNN .

Nasrin last spoke to her daughter just before midnight, she said, and after that, all her attempts to call Nika indicated her phone had been disconnected. Nika’s Instagram and Telegram accounts have been deleted, according to Nika’s aunt and several protesters who spoke to the CNN .

For days, her family says they went to police stations, prisons and hospitals looking for traces of her, all to no avail. Finally, on 30 September, Nika’s mother and brother were asked to identify her corpse, the mother told BBC Persian.

On October 6, in an interview with Radio Farda, Nasrin stated that while she and other family members were looking for Nika in the days after her disappearance, a person gave Nika’s national identification number and told her that “the IRGC took her. , they wanted to interrogate her slowly”.

This matches what Nika’s aunt Atash told BBC Persian shortly after she disappeared. “An unofficial source from the IRGC itself contacted me and said that this child had been in our custody for a week, and after we finished interrogating and building the case file, 1 or 2 days ago [ela] was transferred to Evin Prison,” Atash said.

Atash and Nika’s uncle Mohsen were later arrested by Iranian security forces and forced to make a false statement, according to BBC Persian, citing a source close to the family. After the BBC report, when contacted by CNN Atash asked not to be contacted again, citing security concerns.

As the family searches for answers, the people who were with Nika that day are also recovering from her death.

“The situation was very frightening and everyone thought about running away,” Dina said. “I can’t forgive myself for Nika’s death. She was a child.”