Photo: BBC Persian
Amir Hesam Khodayari Fard
امیرحسام خدایاریفرد
2003–2025 · 1 years ago
- Born
- 19 June 2003
- Taken
- 31 December 2025
- Age
- 22 years old
- From
- Kuhdasht, Lorestan
Kept on this phone only. Nothing is sent.
Their life
Amir Hesam lived in Kuhdasht, in Lorestan. His family are Lak-speaking, from the well-known Mirbeig tribe, and follow the Yarsani faith, a community that has long been shut out of official jobs and public life.
His father is a labourer and builder who sometimes farms, and Amir Hesam often worked beside him to help support the family. They lived like many working families who get by on day labour, with no ties to the state.
On the day he died, his father held his hand, kissed it, and asked him not to go, to come to the village with him instead. Amir Hesam promised he would be gone only a few hours.
How the regime took them
On the evening of 31 December 2025, protesters in Kuhdasht reached Imam Square, where a statue of Khomeini stands. When stones were thrown at the statue, plainclothes agents, Basij members and police fired into the crowd. Amir Hesam had been at the front; as the crowd fell back he was shot from behind, in the side or lower back and in the neck. Local witnesses told IranWire the shooter was a retired IRGC member working in plain clothes.
State media then claimed he was a Basij member killed by protesters' stones. His father answered plainly that his son was not a Basij member. A video of him being lifted into the ambulance shows his face unhurt; later photographs showed deep cuts. (The Boroumand Center gives his age as 22; BBC Persian and Iran Human Rights give 26.)
