On November 16, 2019, he was shot dead in Phase 4 of Mehrshahr, Karaj.
Pouya Bakhtiari’s mother, Nahid Shirpisheh, later said the following about the day of her son’s murder:
Our human dignity has been trampled on for 40 years, and if I and Pouya and others like us cannot defend this dignity, who wants to do it? That night, before Pouya was killed, I told my daughter that tonight was the most beautiful night of my life. I’m still thinking about what made me say this 10 minutes before my son was killed; The boy I was so attached to.
I was chanting when I suddenly saw a flood of people coming down the boulevard, where I was standing, shouting, “I’m going to kill, I’m going to kill, whomever killed my brother.”
They were holding Pouya’s body on their hands. The bloody face of Pouya as his body is carried on people’s hands is the last image I have of him.
On the evening of Monday, December 23, three days before the 40th day of Pouya Bakhtiari’s death, intelligence agents raided Bakhtiari’s home and arrested nine family members, including an 11-year-old child.
On December 24, Mehr News Agency reported:
“These elements [Pouya Bakhtiari’s family members] were arrested in order to protect the order and security of the honorable and damaged people, as well as to prevent the “making up martyr project” continuation and repeating armed actions against the people.”
Pouya’s mother and sister were in custody of the “anonymous soldiers of Imam Zaman” (the 12th Shia Imam who is in hiding for more than 1200 years) until January 7. The father and one of Pouya’s uncles were released from prison on January 25.
While the Bakhtiaris were in custody of the Imam Zaman’s people Qassem Soleimani was engaged in a terrorist operation in Iraq when he was killed on January 3, 2020. Following this incident, Imam Zaman’s regime returned what was left of his body and circled it around Iranian cities for four consecutive days, until in the early hours of January 8, 2020, they fired two missiles and killed 176 passengers of a Ukrainian airliner to take their hard revenge from Iranian people and citizens of several other countries.
Now, more than 5 months after these incidents, the regime’s intelligence services are trying to tarnish the name and face of this grieving father by publishing photos and videos of Pouya Bakhtiari’s father. Because Manouchehr Bakhtiari is seeking justice for his son and other victims.
Islamic Republic mercenaries in cyberspace, as they know Qassem Soleimani is a despised figure in the eyes of the public, have published a very short video and photos of him holding Soleimani’s banner in his hands when attending his funeral. Only hours after the release of these images, Manouchehr Bakhtiari released a video explaining the physical and psychological torture he had to endure when in the IRGC’s intelligence detention center.
In this video message, he once again made the same clear statement that he uttered three days ago on the 11th anniversary of the assassination of Neda Agha Soltan on her grave:
“We are the plaintiffs of all the victims who were killed during the 41 years of the corrupt and criminal regime of the Islamic Republic.”
Translation of this article by Sahar.