Iran killed her teenage daughter – now she is facing up to the regime

Samira says she never used to be political. “I worked in sales in Iran. I sold cosmetics,” she tells BBC Panorama. But that all changed the day her only child was shot dead in front of her by Iranian security forces. Sixteen-year-old Sevda was taking part in protests against Iran’s repressive regime that engulfed the country earlier this year – before the US and Israel launched widespread air strikes which killed the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Samira’s grief became fury as Iran’s authorities then hindered, rather than helped, her search for her daughter’s body, she says. “I realised that finding Sevda wasn’t the end, but just the beginning of all the harassment they put me through.” Samira made a dramatic escape from Iran on foot, navigating dangerous mountainous terrain. She now lives abroad in hiding, describing herself as a “one-woman army fighting the regime”. In a search for accountability and justice after her daughter’s death, she is intent on naming the members of the security forces and officials she believes were responsible for firing fatal shots during the protests. “They’ll bring me to the brink of death before they kill me, but finding me won’t be easy… Return to normal life? There is no going back,” she says. Samira is among several Iranians the BBC has spoken to since the start of the year. Some, still inside the country, told Panorama they wanted to speak out despite the risks, saying they had found it difficult to hold on to hope once the mass protests had been brutally crushed. The Iranian embassy in London told Panorama that peaceful and legitimate protests had been hijacked by foreign powers, including the US, which promoted violence, provided weapons and equipment, and compromised public security. Sevda was killed on 9 January as she and Samira took part in huge demonstrations on the outskirts of the capital Tehran which had begun the previous month. They had been sparked by economic discontent, before escalating into calls for an end to the country’s Islamic Republic. Though Samira denies she was especially political then, she says her daughter was. Sevda’s idols were two other young women – Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody after an alleged violation against the mandatory headscarf triggered mass protests, and Nika Shakarami, who was killed during a subsequent uprising against Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women. “She kept them alive in her thoughts and always wanted to continue their path [of resistance],” Samira says. The day before Sevda was killed, the numbers protesting had been particularly high. Samira says she and Sevda had responded to a call by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah (king), for demonstrations. “The security forces had lost control,” she says. The swell in numbers had spooked Iran’s government, and the following day a shoot-to-kill order was announced, Samira says. But she had thought it just an empty threat. “They lied so much in Iran… We couldn’t imagine a massacre of that scale.” And they were reassured, she says, by US President Trump’s promise that he had their backs. He had told US media on 8 January: “I have let [the Iranian authorities] know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots… we’re going to hit them very hard.” But nevertheless the crowds appeared smaller on the 9th, Samira says. Sevda seemed to know the risks, she says. Her daughter took off her earrings and gave them to her grandmother. She also shared her phone passcode with Samira. The mother and daughter gathered with the rest of the protesters. Sevda then stood on a dustbin and began leading a chant. “It seemed there were more forces than people,” Samira says of the area where they were. “I don’t know how, within one day, they gathered so many… Basijis and IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] forces.” The IRGC defends the country’s Islamic establishment, and the paramilitary Basij Resistance Force are volunteers for the IRGC. “A sniper fired from the roof of a building on our right. The bullet must have come from the rooftop. The bullet went through her heart. I couldn’t even scream. I just stared at Sevda – her body lying lifeless. Blood was gushing out her mouth and nose. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe she was dying. Her eyes were still looking at me.” Samira says she managed to get Sevda to hospital and she was told they were operating on her, but then the door opened and she saw Sevda had been zipped into a body bag. Sevda’s body was taken away. Samira says it took her days to find her daughter again. Like many others, she found herself at one of Tehran’s largest morgues. “Teenagers – young boys and girls. So many had been killed,” she cries. “I died with every bag I unzipped. I’d never seen so many bodies. But I wouldn’t give up.” She finally found her daughter. “Three bodies were piled on top of Sevda. That’s how we found her.” Iranian authorities acknowledgethat more than 3,000 people were killed in the protests, but claim some were members of the security forces. One human rights group, Hrana, however, estimates the number of dead stands at more than 7,000, most of them protesters. Finding Sevda’s body was just the beginning of Samira’s battle with the authorities, she says. To be allowed to take away the body for burial, she says she was forced to say that “terrorists” rather than the security forces had been responsible for Sevda’s death. “They did this to cover up what they’d done on 8 and 9 January, to hide how many people they had killed. They silenced families by telling them to say their loved ones were killed by Israeli or American terrorists.” Nevertheless she was barred from visiting the grave after the funeral, or organising a tombstone, she says. And Samira says the harassment continued. A few days before the ceremony to mark 40 days since Sevda died – highly significant in Iranian culture – she says she was summoned by a local branch of the Ministry of Intelligence. “They told me: ‘You should give us an interview and say that Sevda was a Basiji and she was killed by the protesters. Then we will announce her [as] a martyr – you will then receive perks, a house, or anything that you want.'” She is sure this offer was prompted by fear, because she had shared Sevda’s death with an Iranian media organisation based in London, once the internet had been reconnected in the country. “It scared them that I was in touch with external networks or those outside Iran.” To avoid giving the interview, Samira fled Iran as soon as the 40th day anniversary was over. “I didn’t want to trade with my child’s blood.” She says people smugglers helped her to escape. She crossed rivers and mountains to get to safety. A video she made of herself fleeing makes clear her fury. “This crap government, these bastards, they’ve harassed me so much,” she tells the camera as she marches along a mountain path bordered by a deep ravine. Samira says after she continued to give interviews to foreign media from abroad, she was charged in absentia with a string of offences, including “moharebeh” – waging war against God – which can carry the death penalty. To mark what would have been Sevda’s 17th birthday, her relatives and friends held a vigil – with Samira watching from exile on a livestream. “Then suddenly, the feed cut out,” she says. She discovered that the event had been raided, she says, and some of her family and friends arrested by the IRGC. She says her family was warned by the authorities that, if they continued to gather at Sevda’s grave, her body would be exhumed and moved elsewhere. Now, Samira shares the names, online, of Iranian security force members and officials she believes were responsible for firing fatal shots during the 8 and 9 January protests she and Sevda joined. “I want justice to be served for every single person whose name I expose, because they have killed so many young people. My goal is for them to be identified so they can be put on trial,” she says. When one of the men Samira named online was later found dead, a regime supporter offered a $5,000 (£3,732) reward for information about her whereabouts, presuming she was responsible. Iranian state media has since reported the arrest of nine people in connection with the death. Despite the risks, Samira says she refuses to be silenced. “Every day and every second without Sevda is very difficult for me. It’s like a mother who has lost her heart, who has lost her being, has lost her life… “But the fact that Sevda is not breathing has made it possible for me to stand on my feet… to think about honouring her life and her path… all those bodies I saw, all those body bags I opened looking for Sevda, they all made me fight the Islamic Republic until my last breath.”