Mehran Shekari

Mehran Shekari (Persian: مهران شکاری; recorded in the Iran Human Rights Society's consolidated list as Mehran Shekari Noei, son of Mahmoudreza) was a young Azerbaijani Turk from the Taghiabad neighbourhood of Miandoab (Qoshachay) in West Azerbaijan. A source close to the family told IranWire that he was his family's only child: his father had died and his mother had remarried, so Mehran lived in Karaj with his maternal uncle, worked alongside him and was learning plastering as his apprentice. The same source put his age at about 19 or 20 and said he had done his military service; the Iran Human Rights Society and Persian Wikipedia give 22. Gunaz TV and Iran International reported that his grandfather had been killed in the Iran-Iraq war and is honoured by the state as a martyr.

On Thursday 12 Aban 1401 (3 November 2022), Mehran went with his uncle to Behesht-e Sakineh cemetery in Gohardasht, Karaj, for the fortieth-day memorial of Hadis Najafi and Nima Rezadoust, two young people killed in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Gunaz TV reported that he was killed by direct fire from security forces; at the same gathering, it said, agents beat Hadis Najafi's mother and wounded her sister Shirin with birdshot. IranWire was told that his uncle, who stood beside him, was also badly beaten.

A video filmed from a rooftop showed his body lying beside the kerb near a silver Pride car, a blue mask still on his face and blood spreading from his head. In a second video, special-unit agents on motorcycles surround the body, load it onto a pickup truck and cover it with an advertising banner. Until then he had been unidentified. According to an informed source quoted by IranWire, the IRGC demanded 200 million tomans to hand over the body and told the family to bury him at once on its instructions; Gunaz TV attributed the demand to the Ministry of Intelligence and said the family was poor. Azerbaijani activist Duman Radmehr told IranWire that the body was handed over at 4 a.m. on 17 Aban, five days after his death, and buried with only the family present. Iran International reported that he was buried in Miandoab surrounded by security agents.

That day people in Karaj laid red and white flowers where he had fallen, and residents of Miandoab and Azerbaijani activists called a memorial for his third day on Thursday 19 Aban at Golshan-e Zahra in the Rabari neighbourhood of Miandoab. On Monday 12 Dey 1401 (2 January 2023), his birthday, VOA Persian published a video of his mother weeping at his grave in Miandoab. The Iran Human Rights Society's list of 662 (no. 214) records him as shot by security agents in Karaj on 12 Aban, while its consolidated list gives 16 Aban. The NCRI's lists (no. 365, 3 November 2022), Persian Wikipedia's table of the 1401 dead (no. 129) and English and German Wikipedia also record him. He is a different person from Mohsen Shekari, who was executed in Tehran later that year.