16-year-old Serena Esmailzadeh was killed during protests against the regime in Iran. The police forced her family to lie about the circumstances of her death, but a media channel opposed to the regime revealed the hard truth
The head of the justice department of Alborz district, Hussein Fazli, claimed last Thursday that 16-year-old Serena Esmailzadeh jumped from a neighbor’s roof and committed suicide and that her death was not related to the protests. “Resident had a history of overdosing on pills to kill himself,” he said. Fazli also claimed that her mother, uncle and younger brother went to the prosecutor’s office to complain about reports on social media that she had been killed in the protests.
Less than a day later, last Friday, state media published a video in which Serena’s mother is seen denying that her daughter was killed in the protests and saying that she has a history of suicide attempts in what appears to be a forced interview. But anti-Iranian media reports that the regime is lying and that the young woman was killed by the regime. The 16-year-old died on the way to the hospital after being severely beaten in the head with clubs in protest of the killing of Mahsa Amini, another 22-year-old who was killed by the morality police in Karaj, half an hour’s drive from the capital Tehran, on September 21.
Sources close to the family wrote on social media that over 50 members of the security forces were present at her funeral, apparently to prevent a protest, and no one was allowed to take video in the cemetery. The reports say that the security forces removed all the pictures and condolence messages on the wall of her house just a day after Serena’s funeral. They also say the family was not allowed to hire a lawyer and is under pressure to say she took her own life.