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Six hours before he died last Saturday morning, Navid Afkari spoke for the last time by phone with his family in prison. The recording of the conversation circulates on the Internet.
“Are you healthy?” They ask him.
Navid Afkari hesitates.
“Are you in the cell?”
“We are in the basement,” replied the 27-year-old athlete.
Afkari’s relatives already know the “basement” of Adel Abad Prison in Shiraz from previous conversations. The term is a coded synonym for the torture chamber of the detention center where Navid Afkari was held for more than two years.
Serious demonstrations
Iranian authorities had accused the popular athlete of killing a security officer at a demonstration in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz in November 2018. Afkari insidiously stabbed the man with a knife. The fighter was sentenced to death in court. Two of his brothers received long prison terms, 54 and 27 years, for “accessory to murder.” Afkari had protested his innocence to the end.
Back then, people spontaneously took to the streets in the cities of the Islamic Republic, including in Shiraz. They were furious at skyrocketing gas and food prices and corruption in the state apparatus. Intelligence officials mingled with the protesters. Occasionally, protesters were arbitrarily shot in the head or chest. The objective was to spread fear and terror. Citizens must be prevented from taking to the streets.
However, the protesters also resisted brutal attacks by the secret police in plain clothes. There are no official death figures, but various sources assume several hundred. Most of the victims were civilians, but also security guards. One of the dead was Hassan Turkaman, a man in his forties. It belonged to the militant Basij, a subgroup of the Revolutionary Guard.
Afkari Star Fighter: An Iranian Hero
Photo: NWRI BROCHURE / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock / NWRI BROCHURE / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
Afkari was one of the leaders of the protests in Shiraz. As an internationally successful fighter, he was known and especially respected in Iran, the sport is considered particularly honorable, athletes represent the principle of justice and often defend the rights of the weak and the poor in civil life. You could say that he was an Iranian hero.
Arresting him and charging him with murder in what the human rights organization Amnesty International calls a “parody of justice” sent a clear message to the Iranian opposition: no one will be saved; those who protest against the government must expect the worst.
Confession under torture
During the trial, a recording was heard in which Navid Afkari confessed to the murder. However, the confession was obtained under torture. The athlete had immediately revoked it.
We know from those around Navid Afkari what led him to confess to an act that he apparently did not commit: the torturers hung him with their hands on the ceiling and beat him with cables and wooden sticks. They also used a method called “Judsche” in torture jargon, which means “fried chicken.”
The offender stretches on a metal pole, like a chicken roasted on a spit, the hands are tied with the legs. The torturers roll their victim across the room and beat them at the same time. Afkari broke her shoulder, says a family friend. To escape the pressures of torture, the older brother, Waheed, tried to kill himself. In the cell, the carotid artery was cut with a broken vessel. Waheed was in a coma for days, but was ultimately saved.
Last hope: public attention
When it became clear that the death sentence would be carried out against him, Afkari went public. “They are looking for a neck to hang and they chose me,” he said in an audio message smuggled out of the prison. Afkari did everything possible to activate influential supporters in Iran and abroad: “If I am executed,” it said, “I want you to know that an innocent person was executed despite trying and fighting with all his might it has to be listened “.
Even the mandatory lawyer for Afkaris, the son of a former Iranian secret service minister, protested on Twitter against his client’s treatment: “A confession made under pressure and torture is not valid. Navid Afkaris is innocent. There is no evidence in his against”.
Athletes and politicians from around the world appealed to the Tehran government for mercy for Afkari’s life, including a union representing 85,000 athletes around the world. Even the president of the United States, Donald Trump, tweeted: “The only act of the fighter was a demonstration against the government in the street.” I do not help.
How did Afkari die?
“The news says that you have been examined and that everything is fine with you and the brothers,” said the relative in the last phone call with Afkari.
“I’m telling you the truth. They found ten to fifteen wounds on my body,” Navid Afkari replied. It appears that just hours before the planned execution, the regime took revenge on Navid Afkari for the last time, probably because it was tarnishing the reputation of the Islamic Republic of Iran with its international appeal for help.
It is still not entirely clear how exactly Afkari died. Not even if he was actually hanged or possibly died as a result of torture, as family members suspect.
“Were you in such a hurry that he couldn’t even be granted the last right to say goodbye to the family?” Navid Afkari’s lawyer asked on Twitter. Iranian law allows convicts to see their closest relatives prior to execution.
Mother of the executed (in a video call): “How can you survive this?”
That Friday night, Afkari was told in jail that they wanted to transfer him to Tehran. But he died on Saturday morning at 5 am in Shiraz.
“Don’t scream your pain too loud, that’s what they want”
At the funeral, which had to be hastily held the same day at 10 p.m., the parents were only allowed a quick glance at the face of their son’s body. They saw traces of blood. Navid Afkari’s nose was broken.
A few days before his violent end, Navid Afkari’s mother had sought advice from a woman whose daughter was executed a few years ago: “How can you survive this?”
The woman whose daughter was hanged replied: “Fight to the end. Now you must be the hero that Navid was yourself, and after his death do not shout your pain out loud, that’s what they want – we weak see and destroy” .
