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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Deepa Parent

‘Our silence didn’t protect him’: daughter pleads for father on death row in Iran

A father and daughter hugging with their faces side-by-side
Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri, a Kurdish political prisoner who was arrested and sentenced to death, with his now-exiled daughter, Zhino. Photograph: Handout

In late October 2022, as protests over 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody swept across Iran, Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri, a father of three, was racing through alleyways in the city of Bukan, in western Iran, carrying medical supplies to secret clinics where doctors treated injured demonstrators in defiance of the state.

Many of the wounded were too afraid to seek hospital care after reports of secret police patrolling wards, interrogating patients and detaining injured protesters. By helping, Babamiri, a 47-year-old fruit and vegetable farmer, did not see himself as a revolutionary but simply as someone doing what was right, says his daughter, Zhino.

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