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Sohrab Arabi

سهراب اعرابی

1990–2009 · 17 years ago

Born
23 February 1990
Taken
15 June 2009
Age
19 years old
From
Tehran, Tehran

The 2009 uprising

Kept on this phone only. Nothing is sent.

Their life

Sohrab Arabi was born on 23 February 1990 and was 19 and a student in the spring of 2009. He and his mother both backed Mir Hossein Mousavi, and before the vote they campaigned for him together.

When the result was announced, mother and son went out side by side among the hundreds of thousands who marched through Tehran on 15 June to ask for their votes back. They lost each other in the crowd. She went home to wait for him, and he never came back. She spent the next month searching prisons and offices for him, and after his death she became known across the country simply as the mother of Sohrab, a voice for other grieving mothers.

How the regime took them

Sohrab disappeared on 15 June 2009 near Azadi Square, where Basij members at the Ashura Battalion 117 base were firing on the crowd from their roof and windows. For 26 days officials told his family he was in detention. On 11 July they were told he was dead, and the family found his photo among pictures of dozens of the dead.

The judge on the case said he was one of seven people shot from the Basij building. His death certificate says he died soon after being shot on 15 June, yet the Kahrizak coroner received his body only on 19 June. He was buried at Behesht-e Zahra on 13 July, with plainclothes agents watching.

Taken in the same wave

From the same city

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Their story

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