Sattar Beheshti's Mother to Khamenei: You Have Destroyed Our Country

"I thought my child would come back to me. I didn’t think my child would be killed four days later."

Gohar Eshghi, the 75-year-old mother of murdered Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti, has released a new video to mark the anniversary of her son’s death in custody. In the message published on the Sattar Beheshti Foundation’s official Instagram account, she narrated the moment of her son’s arrest on October 30, 2012.

The agents who came to their home in Robat Karim, southwest of Tehran, wore pink shirts. They openly mocked the family, Gohar Eshghi said, and confiscated everything in the house up to and including Sattar’s niece’s paintings.

"When I asked them whether they had a warrant to enter the house, they showed me a gun," she said.

Prior to his arrest, Sattar Beheshti had received repeated death threats over the incendiary content of his blog: a collection of personal thoughts and writings on life under the Islamic Republic, with fewer than 100 regular readers.

After he was taken away, Beheshti spent at least one night on Ward 350 of Evin Prison. Cellmates later reported seeing marks of severe torture on his body. The family were notified of his death, which ostensibly took place on November 3, a week later.

In the new video, Gohar Eshghi said that when she came to collect her son’s body, she smiled at him so he wouldn’t think his mother was upset. Addressing Ali Khamenei directly, she told the Supreme Leader he had “destroyed” Iran, lamenting in her local dialect: "My liver is burning; may God burn your liver."

In 2014 a court sentenced a police officer named Akbar Taghizadeh, said to have been involved in Sattar Beheshti’s murder, to three years in prison, 74 lashes and two years of internal exile. But the officer was only charged with manslaughter, whereas Sattar’s family and loved ones, including Eshghi, insist it was premeditated murder. Eshghi holds Khamenei personally responsible for her son’s death.

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