Haleh Sahabi, the latest victim murdered by Iran's security forces during her Father's funeral!

Haleh Sahabi, 54, a daughter from the Sahabi family, who had been veterans of struggles against dictatorship in both the Shah’s regime and the Islamic Republic, died during her father’s funeral.  Haleh was serving a two year term for attending a gathering outside the parliament building in opposition to Ahmadinejad’s inauguration in August 2009.  She was allowed out two weeks prior to her father’s death and spent the entire time at his bedside in hospital. He never gained consciousness to know she was there. Ezatollah Sahabi died on Tuesday and his body was transferred home to be buried on Wednesday morning.

According to eyewitnesses Haleh, who has been reciting verses from the Quoran throughout the night at her father’s side while the security forces had occupied part of their home was walking ahead of the procession to lead the way to the cemetery where her father was due to be buried. As she stepped out of the house, a plain cloth security man approached her and grabbed the photo she was carrying of her father. During the heated argument Haleh was pushed down and never got up. Shortly afterwards she died of heart attack.

Haleh was member of the National-Religious Activists Council. She was a women’s rights activist. She was a member of Mothers for Peace. She was a vocal voice against the Islamic Republic’s strategies of total wipe out of dissent in Iran. She was one of the few Iranian women who had studied the Quoranic texts systematically in order to attain gender equality and justice out of her readings.

Iranian women and men from all walks of life who have relentlessly campaigned for freedom, for democracy and for human rights and who have systematically been under pressure for the past three decades mourn the loss of one of their comrades; a woman of courage, spirit and wisdom. A woman who sought to find a different reading of the very own texts that the Iranian regime’s oppressive strategies had anchored on. She sought to find a way out of the darkness of the present times into the light of freedom and peace in Iran. She was sent away into the darkness of death, prematurely, unjustifiably and haughtily by those who think power is theirs forever.

 History will prove they are wrong.

Haleh Sahabi is survived by three children; her twin girls, a son and her husband.

  Rouhi Shafii

Author & Director of International Coalition against Violence in Iran (ICAVI)

London