'What They Did To Him...': Daughter's Plea For Father On Death Row In Iran For Helping Protesters
A Kurdish farmer in Iran has been sentenced to death for allegedly aiding anti-government protesters during the 2022 uprising, drawing international concern amid ongoing crackdowns. Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri, 47, was arrested in April 2023 in Bukan, where he had reportedly delivered medical supplies to underground clinics treating wounded demonstrators during the nationwide protests sparked by Mahsa Amini's death in police custody.
His daughter Zhino told The Guardian, 'There was intense firing from the forces and many protesters were injured. Everyone was helping each other and he volunteered. I told him not to talk about it openly on the phone, but he said it wasn't dangerous to help injured people. He just couldn't watch young people bleed in the streets."
But what he saw as a moral duty, the Iranian state has now labelled as treason as in April 2023, Rezgar Babamiri was arrested and later charged with 'armed insurrection", 'espionage for Israel" and 'leading an armed group." In July 2024, Iranian state TV broadcast a video of his forced confession and last week, his family learned that he had been sentenced to death.
The charges, his 24-year-old daughter insists, are a fabrication, saying, 'My dad is a simple farmer who loves poems, likes watching the news, and enjoys working out." In a letter smuggled out of prison, Rezgar Babamiri described more than four months of brutal torture- electric shocks, mock executions and beatings that left him partially deaf.
Zhino said, 'When I first read the letter, I skipped the parts about torture. I couldn't bear to see what they did to him." Zhino, who now lives in exile in Norway, recalls her last phone call with her father, sharing, 'He kept saying, 'Zhino, are you there?' I could hear him, but he couldn't hear me. I was crying. That moment haunts me."
Amnesty International says Rezgar Babamiri's arrest is part of a broader campaign of repression against Iran's Kurdish minority and post-2022 protest activists. Zhino said, 'My dad and the others are paying the price for simply being born Kurdish. They told him no one would care if he died and that he'd end up in a mass grave."
She added, 'I regret staying quiet. The silence didn't protect him. It almost broke me."
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