Manoochehr Bakhtiari’s Mother: I Have Been Without News of My Son for Seventy Days
Bibi Zahra Bakhtiari, the mother of Manoochehr Bakhtiari, announced through a video posted on social media that after 70 days since her son’s arrest, she has no information about his condition and Mr. Bakhtiari has had no contact with his family.
In this video, she said that her son has been “taken by Mr. Khamenei’s forces for 70 days and I have no news of my son. If my son doesn’t call me and I have no news of him, on Saturday I will bring all of Iran in front of the Revolutionary Court”.
Saba Bakhtiari, Manoochehr Bakhtiari’s sister, posted her mother’s video on her Twitter page and wrote that “seventy days without news of my brother is the end of the Bakhtiari family’s silence”.
Manoochehr Bakhtiari, the father of Poya Bakhtiari who was killed in Mehr Shahr, Karaj in November 2019 after being shot in the head, was beaten by security forces on April 29 at his brother’s home and transferred to an unknown location.
Last July, he had gone to Kish Island to protest the 25-year Iran-China cooperation agreement and to seek justice for his son’s blood, where he was arrested and transferred to Bandar Abbas prison, and then released on bail on December 7 of the same year.
Manoochehr Bakhtiari had previously been detained for nearly a month without trial following his insistence on holding the fortieth-day commemoration ceremony for the victims of the November protests. He reported on December 20, 1999, that his brother, Mehrdad Bakhtiari, had been sentenced to five years suspended imprisonment and a two-year ban on leaving the country.
Manoochehr Bakhtiari, in a petition submitted to United Nations officials, called for the establishment of an investigation commission regarding the “bloody suppression of protesters”.
The November 2019 protests, which initially began as a reaction to the sudden increase in gasoline prices, quickly changed direction and targeted the Islamic Republic government. However, these protests were met with severe suppression by military and police forces.
Iran’s Interior Minister said that between 200 and 225 people were killed in these protests, but Amnesty International released information about 304 victims and emphasized that the number of those killed could be much higher than this figure.
Reuters news agency also put the death toll at around 1,500 people.
Source: Radio Farda
