In the early hours of the morning on Saturday, 12 September 2020, Navid Afkari, an Iranian wrestler, was secretly murdered by agents of the Islamic Republic before sunrise, and buried by them in Sangar village cemetery in the same darkness.
The regime blocked the roads leading to Sangar on Navid’s seventh day of passing (commemorated in Iran). Islamic Republic oppressive forces were everywhere, roaming around Sangar. When it was the 40th (another commemoration day after passing), all the roads in Sanger were blocked again. The village became filled with “security” forces. The agents were checking the phones and filming the participants in the event.
Three months after Navid’s murder, when his father and brother came to Sangar to clean the tomb and install the tombstone, they were arrested. The agents destroyed Navid’s grave.
Before the first anniversary of Navid’s judicial murder, Hassan Younesi, his lawyer, had returned to social media, Emaduddin Baghi had identified Iranian people and social media users as the culprits of Navid’s murder in government news agencies. And when a year passed, the roads to Sangar were closed again, agents were sent again, and members of Afkari’s family were arrested again.
This year, on the second anniversary of Navid, Sangar became a “security” risk again. All entrance roads to this small but highly secured village, 70 kilometers north of Shiraz, were closed:
This year, too, according to HRANA, Habib Afkari and his wife Fatemeh Namjoo and Elham Afkari, who were on their way to commemorate the anniversary of their brother’s murder at the hands of the regime, were arrested.
On the second anniversary of Navid Afkari’s murder, state-media Mehr News Agency added a new charge to the victim’s case by publishing a completely baseless article devoid of any evidence. The title of Mehr’s article was: “How did the second murder plan of Navid Afkari fail?” The article has no answer in explaining the nature of this accusation. Instead, the same claims that have been proven to be false and contradictory many times during these two years are repeated, and in the end, relying on an “informed judicial source” whose name is not mentioned, the baseless claim is made that “After the murder of Hasan Turkman, Navid Afkari,” which was never proven, “intended to kill another person” – which person? What was his name? The identity of this person also remains unknown in the article. In the last paragraph, Mehr writes: “Also, the follow-ups carried out by Mehr’s reporter indicate that Navid Afkari has numerous records of assaulting people and theft in his record, and even significant amounts of contraband has been confiscated from his brother.”
To refute this claim, it is enough to mention the fact that in the “Final Decision of the Prosecutor’s Office” issued by the 8th branch of the Prosecutor’s Office for Special Investigation of Criminal Affairs and Security Crimes of Shiraz, it is clearly stated that Navid and his brother, Vahid Afkari, had no criminal record:
Branch 116 of Criminal Court 2 of Fars province had filed 20 charges against Navid Afkari. None of the accusations were ever proven or accepted by the public opinion. But as if these 20 accusations were not enough, now, after 2 years have passed, we see that the mouthpieces and regime-affiliated media are still creating cases and lying for the innocent person who was taken to the slaughterhouse two years ago on this day to be buried at night and forgotten. But Navid will never be forgotten.
Translation of this post by Sahar.
