His Body was Found after a Month — With Broken Skull, Arms and Legs

“The family had gone to identify the body and today, before the burial, saw Ershad’s body. They say, from the crack and the hole in his skull, it is clear that he had been shot in the head. His arms and legs were broken too. They say his body was found next to Garan Dam and the blood on the ground was still fresh. It seems that his body had been there for two days at most. His mother fainted when she saw her son’s head. His father had a heart attack and his brother is in shock. They took his body to Sarvabad to bury.”

According to his family, Ershad Rahmanian disappeared on November 17 and his body was found about a month later next to Garan Dam in Kurdistan province. Rahmanian had joined protests in the city of Marivan on November 16. The next day he took his sick mother to the hospital. Then he disappeared. The family had no news of him and searched for him at hospitals in Marivan and Sanandaj, the provincial capital, but could not find him. At last, on December 16, the medical examiner gave his body to his family. The coroner issued a death certificate but cited no cause of death.

Without any clear information, it is difficult to know when and how Ershad Rahmanian was killed, but when they went to identify the body, his family said they believed their 28-year-son had died recently. From what they can tell, he did not look as if he had died a month ago.

They buried him in the village of Sarvabad on December 16 in the presence of family members and villagers — and, of course, security agents. Authorities have insisted on overseeing the funeral rites of many killed protesters in the weeks following nationwide protests. 

Kamiar Ahmadi, Rahmanian’s cousin, has been tweeting since his cousin’s body was found. According to him, security agents told his family to say that Ershad Rahmanian had committed suicide: “They told the family that they must say that a classmate of Ershad had committed suicide and he himself had committed suicide because he had been depressed as a result. But his mother refuses to do so. Ershad had recently received his Bachelor’s degree in medical emergencies and he wanted to prepare himself for his Master’s degree.”

According to Ahmadi, last week the family received a telephone call and were told that their son was in prison in Sanandaj, but when the family went there, prison officials told them he was not there. A few days later they received another call, telling them to go and identify his body. They did this, but the body they were shown was not Ershad Rahmanian's. Finally, on December 15, the missing man’s brother went to the medical examiner to identify another body. This is when it was confirmed that he had been killed.

That night, Ershad Rahmanian’s father had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital after he learned that his son had been killed. On Monday, December 16, as he was buried in Sarvabad, neither parents had the heart to look at the shattered body of their son. According to Kamiar Ahmadi, his body was found by local people next to Garan Dam, and he had a cracked skull, and broken arms and legs. The blood on the ground next to the body was fresh. “His brother Milad went to identify the body,” Ahmadi said, “and then they took his mother there. But when my aunt Hajar saw his body and his shattered head, she could not take it and fainted.”

On the morning of December 16, the family went to the medical examiner to collect the body. But the doors to the building were closed and they were forced to wait outside. At first, the family believed the body was not going to be returned to them, but Kamiar Ahmadi told IranWire that, after hours of waiting, the body was delivered to the family. They took him back to Sarvabad to be buried immediately.

“Everybody is very scared,” the cousin told us. “His brother keeps saying that, if they had tried harder to find Ershad earlier, perhaps they would have found him alive. I could not stay at work. Maybe after Ershad is buried the family can talk.”

In his last tweet, Kamiar Ahmadi reported that this Thursday, December 19, would have been Ershad Rahmanian’s birthday.

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