The story of Navid who was flame of truth, which will still burn in Iran ​​​​​​​

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi

Navid Behboudi (23) finished work at his bookstore on Saturday morning, Nov. 16. He joined a group of people protesting the gasoline price hike. The regime security agents ruthlessly shot him in the head.

According to his friends, Navid was polite, kind, energetic, active, and full of desire. He was the eldest child in the family. He ranked 70 in the admission test in mechanical engineering. His Instagram account had 22,000 followers. Despite his admission to the university, he opted to operate a book gallery. He was an athlete and had passed the TOEFL test.

On Saturday morning, Nov. 16, 2019, he left his work and returned to his hometown, the city of Quods, to visit his family. He had also planned to attend a friend’s wedding on Sunday. He had in mind to return to his work on Monday. In the afternoon, he was shot at Emarat Street, near Liberty Square and none of his plans materialized.

Navid Behboudi.

His father called Navid at 3 P.M. from the City of Quods, near Tehran, on Nov.16 and informed him he would come home for lunch. However, he got lunch at his aunt’s house and went to join the protesters. On Sunday, Nov. 17, a guard stationed on the roof of a nearby building shot Navid in the head and brought his life, as well as his dreams, to an end.

In a desperate and cowardly attempt, the regime decided to cut off the Internet from that day, hoping to prevent the world from becoming aware of its brutality and crackdown.

At around 5 P.M., one of Navid’s friends informed his family. Navid’s family began a frantic search for his whereabouts. They finally went to the Kahrizak forensic center. According to a forensic source, Navid’s corpse had been ripped apart to show that the cause of death was not shooting.

The security forces banned his family from having any funeral ceremonies in Navid’s hometown. They also warned his father to keep his mouth shut and not say anything about the cause of his son’s death. His father was asked to announce the cause of death as an illness. Any disobedience to their orders could have resulted in his body not being released to the family.

Eventually, after receiving the necessary commitments from the family, on Tuesday, November 19, 2019, Navid’s body was transported by a pickup truck void of any government affiliation and buried in the village of Mehravazan in the northwest of Gilan province, hundreds of kilometers from his hometown. Navid’s family was not allowed to bury their child in their own town.

The pickup driver said there were two other unidentified bodies in the truck, which were secretly buried on the way. The driver told Navid’s family that the dead bodies who had not yet been identified were usually accompanied by the bodies that had been identified and were buried in random places along the way to the final destination.

In the recent protest of frustrated and dissatisfied people in Iran, more than 1,500 people have been killed, 4,000 injured, and more than 12,000 arrested.

Navid’s funeral ceremony.

Navid Behboudi is one of the 1,500 protesters killed with firearms in the deadly crackdown on protesters in the recent uprising in Iran. Narrating the story of his life and death and that of the other victims who lost their loved ones is not just revealing the extent of the regime’s savagery, but it is an attempt to commemorate the memories of their heroism and a pledge to the international community.