‘Our silence didn’t protect him’: daughter pleads for father on death row in Iran | Iran

In late October 2022, as protests over 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s demise in police custody swept throughout Iran, Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri, a father of three, was racing by means of alleyways within the metropolis of Bukan, in western Iran, carrying medical provides to secret clinics the place docs handled injured demonstrators in defiance of the state.Lots of the wounded had been too afraid to hunt hospital care after reviews of secret police patrolling wards, interrogating sufferers and detaining injured protesters. By serving to, Babamiri, a 47-year-old fruit and vegetable farmer, didn’t see himself as a revolutionary however merely as somebody doing what was proper, says his daughter, Zhino.“There was intense firing from the forces and plenty of protesters had been injured. Everybody was serving to one another and he volunteered,” she says.“I advised him to not discuss it overtly on the cellphone, however he stated it wasn’t harmful to assist injured individuals. He simply couldn’t watch younger individuals bleed within the streets.”Nationwide protests erupted in September 2022 after the demise in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a younger Kurdish girl detained over how she wore her hijab. {Photograph}: AFP/GettyBabamiri was arrested in April 2023 and questioned by the ministry of intelligence in Bukan. Zhino, 24, says the household initially believed it was a short interrogation. “I used to be advised [by relatives] to not fear and that he’d be house quickly,” she says.As a substitute, he disappeared into solitary confinement and was initially denied entry to a lawyer or contact along with his household, the Kurdish Human Rights Community says.Final week, the household heard from a lawyer that Babamiri had been sentenced to demise, together with 4 different Kurdish males, after being charged with “armed rebel”, “main and forming an armed group” and “espionage for Israel”.Zhino, who lives in exile in Norway, says the household have been horrified by the decision. “After I heard in regards to the demise sentence, I used to be numb. After I known as my grandmother and aunt, they had been crying loudly. I’ve by no means heard them cry like that.”Since his arrest, Zhino says a number of individuals have come ahead with tales of how her father helped save their lives.Babamiri was arrested in April 2023 and has been held ever since. {Photograph}: Handout“These fees have been fabricated. My dad is an easy farmer who loves the individuals of his group and his household. He’s a person who loves poems, likes watching information and enjoys understanding,” she says.In July 2024, Iranian state media aired a video exhibiting Babamiri confessing, alongside different males charged in the identical case. Human rights teams say his conviction was primarily based on a compelled confession.In a letter later smuggled out of jail to the household, Babamiri described enduring greater than 4 months of torture, together with waterboarding, electrical shocks, mock executions, and beatings that left him partially deaf.“After I first learn the letter, I skipped the components about torture. I couldn’t bear to see what they did to him,” says Zhino.skip previous publication promotionSign as much as International DispatchGet a distinct world view with a roundup of the very best information, options and photos, curated by our world growth teamPrivacy Discover: Newsletters might include information about charities, on-line advertisements, and content material funded by outdoors events. For extra data see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after publication promotionAmnesty Worldwide says Babamiri’s arrest in 2023 got here throughout a wave of detentions and executions of scholars and activists after the 2022 protests, a part of the Iranian regime’s marketing campaign to instil worry and keep management.Amnesty has additionally repeatedly documented the regime’s arbitrary arrest and detention of Kurds – an ethnic minority in Iran – primarily based on perceived affiliations with opposition teams, usually with out credible proof.“My dad and the others are paying the worth for merely being born Kurdish,” says Zhino. “They advised him nobody would care if he died and that he’d find yourself in a mass grave.”Zhino says members of her household nonetheless dwelling in Iran are fearful, and that she was suggested by well-wishers to remain quiet after his arrest. “I remorse that. The silence didn’t defend him and it virtually broke me,” she says.She has turn out to be an outspoken campaigner, co-founding Daughters of Justice, a gaggle of Iranians preventing to save lots of their imprisoned fathers.In her most up-to-date cellphone name together with her father, he couldn’t hear her. “He stored saying, ‘Zhino, are you there?’. I may hear him, however he couldn’t hear me. I used to be crying. That second haunts me.”She now waits daily for information of his destiny. “I’m scared to verify my cellphone,” she says. “I’m terrified I’ll get up to learn my father’s identify [on the death list].”