Photo: BBC Persian
Azra Bahadorinejad
عذرا بهادرینژاد
2026
- Taken
- 10 January 2026
- Age
- 39 years old
- From
- Sabzevar, Razavi Khorasan
Kept on this phone only. Nothing is sent.
Their life
Azra had studied literature and wrote short stories. For her, a person close to her says, writing was not a hobby but the thing she cared about most.
She thought constantly about Iran and where it was heading, above all about the future of its young people. She was the mother of two children, aged 8 and 16, and she carried those worries the way a mother does.
Hers was a middle-class family which, like so many others, had watched its life slide under the regime's policies and the economic collapse of recent years.
How the regime took them
On Saturday 10 January 2026, in the Be'sat neighbourhood of Sabzevar, security forces were beating two young men in the street. Azra stepped out of her house to see what was going on. The agents shot the two young men, then fired at her house to stop anyone filming. A bullet hit an artery in her neck and she died where she stood.
The authorities refused permission to bury her until 14 January, and several state bodies put her family under pressure. (HRANA records the place as Nishapur.)
