Influential Iranian Women: Shahnaz Akmali (1965-)

“I go to prison as a mother with hope for better days ahead,” Shahnaz Akmali said as she was preparing to report to Evin prison to serve an unjust sentence.

Losing a child to violence is a disaster from which many parents do not recover, but Shahnaz Akmali is a grieving mother who has not given up fighting for justice, even in the face of constant harassment and imprisonment.

Akmali’s 26-year-old son Mostafa Karimbaigi was shot in the forehead in Neauphle-le-Château Street in Tehran during the Ashura religious holiday on December 27, 2009, as protests shook the capital in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election.

Authorities Denied Her Son was Shot

She was born in Tehran on March 21, 1965. She married when she was a teenager and her voice is filled with joy when she remembers becoming a mother. When talking about Mostafa, she does not use the past tense. “I have two children,” she says. “I was 18 when Mostafa was born and then came his sister Maryam. All throughout those years we tried to be each other’s friends. The children, their father and I were very close and talked over everything - until that day in 2009 when, after 14 days of searching for Mostafa, we found his body at the coroner’s.”

The authorities have published their account of how Mostafa died, but his mother has repeatedly disputed this official version, and she continues to do so to this day. Authorities presented his death not as murder by security forces but as an accident, claiming that he fell off a bridge as a result of overflowing crowds during the demonstrations. “He was shot on the Day of Ashura,” Akmali says. “Unfortunately some believe that Mostafa fell off the bridge. No, he did not fall off the bridge. He was shot in the forehead on the left side. The back of his head was gone.”

Throughout these years Akmali and her family have stood by the families of political prisoners, mourned with mothers who have lost their children and endeavoured to be their voice and tell the stories of the injustices they have suffered.

One of Akmali’s most important efforts to tell these stories to the wider public was a documentary she made with Iranian-in-exile Masih Alinejad, the US-based women’s rights activist, about the victims of 2009. When Vahid Sayyadi Nasiri, a young political prisoner at Qom prison, died in hospital in late 2018 after a 60-day hunger strike, Akmali participated in all the mourning ceremonies for him without fearing the consequences and reprisals from the authorities. And when in June 2019 Alireza Shir Mohammad Ali, a 21-year-old political prisoner at Fashafuyeh prison, was murdered by two dangerous criminals who should not have been his cellmates, Akmali’s family was photographed standing next to his family.

Paying the Price for Courage

Akmali has paid a price for her dedication to the cause of justice. Since 2009 security agencies have pressured and threatened her and her family. In January 2017 intelligence officials raided Akmali’s workplace and her house in Tehran, confiscating some of her belongings before arresting her. She spent three weeks at the Intelligence Ministry’s Block 209 at Evin prison, including 17 days in solitary confinement, and was interrogated without the presence of a lawyer before she was released on bail. On October 29, 2017, it was reported that a revolutionary court had sentenced Akmali to one year in prison on a charge of “propaganda against the regime.” She was also banned from travelling abroad, using social media and taking part in any political activities.

Akmali later said that the authorities had threatened to kill her daughter if she did not stop advocating for the plight of other families: “They called me again and said: ‘We will kill your daughter the same way we’ve killed your son, so shut up. Stay home and just recite the Koran for your son. We will kill you and your daughter if you leave home.’”

After the lower revolutionary court published its verdict, many Iranians went onto Twitter using the hashtag #MostafaMom to show their support. “Grieving mother put in a cage... to silence her,” someone tweeted. “This is abuse like no other. How dare any man silence a mother.”

Akmali’s daughter Maryam Karimbaigi believes that the arrest of her mother, and of mothers like those of the imprisoned blogger Soheil Arabi and Saeed Zeinali, a college student who disappeared after being arrested during student protests in 1999, only goes to prove their strong influence.

What has made her so full of passion and determination that her name stands out as an influential Iranian woman, IranWire asked Akmali. “You are too kind,” she says, “but if I want to explain this passion it goes back to only one moment: when, after days of trying and of interrogations we received the permit to bury Mostafa, and the security agents said they themselves would bring his body to the burial site. When they came and, before my eyes, wrapped my son in the shroud and put him in the coffin, I was the first one who went and took hold of the coffin to lift it. Everything started at this moment. It was as though a new woman was born in me, a woman who had a long road ahead of her. I had to cry louder for justice. This new woman helps to not only to give voice to my own person but also to be the voice of others who are bereaved and in pain.”

Daughter Sentenced

Even after she served her prison sentence the harassment of Akmali and her family has not ceased. In August 2022 her daughter Maryam Karimbaigi was sentenced to three years and seven months in prison for attending a concert by the popular Iranian singer Ebi in Turkey, on a charge of “assembly and collusion with the intention of committing a crime against national security”. She was also sentenced to one year in prison for “propaganda against the regime” and on a charge of “possessing alcoholic beverages” she was sentenced to one year in prison plus a fine and 74 lashes.

In February 2020 Akmali reported that her home had been raided by unidentified security forces. In a short video message she said that four male officers and one woman had ransacked their home, confiscating all their electronic devices and the pictures they had kept of the 2009 uprisings.

She said: “Your commander [Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei], has said he won’t allow one mother to shed tears. But you have brought thousands of mothers to tears.”