Iran protester’s death in custody sparks outrage. His family believes he was executed.

By SANAM MAHOZI and ERIKA SOLOMON

When Ali Rahbar disappeared as antigovernment protests swept across Iran last month, there were only two facts his family knew for certain.

He was alive on Jan. 8 when security forces arrested him at demonstrations in the city of Mashhad. And he was dead two weeks later.

Relatives say the only call the family received from authorities about Rahbar — a 33-year-old fitness coach who loved posting weightlifting videos and poetry online — was instructing them to collect his body.

The circumstances of Rahbar’s disappearance and his death remain murky. But his case is one of several that rights groups are investigating as potential extrajudicial killings of protesters held in state custody.

The deadly crackdown on protests has stoked outrage in Iran, as the Islamic Republic faces one of the most vulnerable moments in its 47-year history, amid widespread discontent and the looming threat of a U.S. attack.

The government has shown it has no intention of backing down. Rights groups estimate that thousands of protesters have been killed and that about 40,000 have been detained, so far, and they say they are concerned that the authorities may execute some protesters to dissuade others from further dissent.

The New York Times spoke to three relatives of Rahbar living outside Iran, who were in touch with the family in the weeks since he disappeared. All asked to withhold their full names to protect loved ones inside the country from retribution.

“No lawyer, no court, no kind of normal procedure,” said Borhan, a cousin of Rahbar who lives in Europe. “Nothing happened at all — he was just executed.”

Iranian authorities, including the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, have been adamant that no protesters have been executed so far. And the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, Mizan, published an article about Rahbar’s case in late January, calling it “fake news” and insisting no one with his name had been executed or detained.

The circumstances of exactly how Rahbar died are a potential flashpoint.

President Donald Trump warned in early January that he would strike Iran if it killed “innocent protesters.” By mid-January, when the protests had largely been crushed, Trump backed away from those threats, saying, without providing evidence, that he had prevented the executions of 837 protesters.

Rahbar’s name appeared on a list of nearly 3,000 people that the government said were killed in the protests. The list, which was released last week by Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, does not say how those people died.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry and spokesperson for the judiciary did not respond to emailed requests for comment, and the Times was unable to reach the local prosecutor in Mashhad.

A small circle of loved ones buried Rahbar quickly and discreetly on Jan. 22, according to his relatives, in a service they said was strictly monitored by security forces.

They said the family was ordered not to commemorate the 40th day of mourning after his death, a customary ritual among Iran’s Shiite Muslim majority. Whether or not they and the families of thousands of other slain protesters comply will be a test of Iran’s crackdown — if it has succeeded in silencing them.

One rights group, the New York-based Center for Iran Human Rights, said it had obtained testimony that Rahbar had not been executed but died under torture. That assertion could not be independently verified, and Rahbar’s cousins said security forces would not allow the family to open his shroud to inspect his body.

“His mother was only allowed to see his face,” said his cousin Anna, who lives abroad.

Raha Bahreini, an Iran researcher for Amnesty International, said her organization had gathered enough evidence from the crackdown to suggest “widespread and systemic patterns” of enforced disappearances, torture and abuse of detainees in state custody.