Nika Shakarami became a symbol of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement that shook the Islamic Republic two years ago.
The protests erupted in response to the death in custody on 16 September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by morality police in the capital for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”.
On 20 September 2022, Nika was filmed at a protest in Tehran setting fire to her headscarf, while other protesters chanted “death to the dictator” – a reference to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
She disappeared that evening after telling a friend that she was being chased by security forces.
Her family eventually found her body at a mortuary more than a week later. They alleged that she died from blows to the head and rejected claims from officials that she had killed herself by jumping off the roof of a building.
The BBC Eye investigation, published on Monday, was based on what is understood to be a leaked internal document summarising a hearing on Nika’s case held by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to the document, the teenager was detained by members of a paramilitary group who had been deployed by the IRGC as an undercover team to monitor protests in Tehran that day.
The document details a series of events that allegedly happened while Nika was restrained in the back of an unmarked freezer van along with three members of the team. These include:
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One of the men molested her while he was sitting on her
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Despite being handcuffed and restrained, she fought back, kicking and swearing
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An admission that this provoked the men to beat her to death with batons
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An IRGC officer ordered the men to dump her body on a street
The BBC report acknowledges there are numerous fake Iranian official documents in circulation, but says “extensive investigations indicate the papers we obtained do chronicle the teenager’s last movements”.
The BBC also put the allegations to the IRGC and the Iranian government before publication and they did not respond.
