Mohammad Javad Zahedi

Mohammad Javad Zahedi (Persian: محمدجواد زاهدی; also recorded as Zahedi Saravi) was a twenty-year-old from Sari, Mazandaran, the son of Mohammadreza and Mahsa Yazdani, with two sisters. Iran International gives his birth date as 6 Shahrivar 1381 (28 August 2002); the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center gives 4 Shahrivar 1381. He had a diploma in building drafting and hoped to go to university, but an accident a year before his death held him back and he was still recovering, VOA Persian reported.

On the evening of 30 Shahrivar 1401 (21 September 2022), a few weeks after his twentieth birthday, he was on Enghelab Street in Sari, opposite Chaharrah-e Bargh. His mother told Shargh daily that he had gone to a pharmacy on that street for medicine and was shot from behind on his way back. The Boroumand Center, citing Iran International, writes that he had joined the protesters there, that his eyes were burning from tear gas, and that at about 9:20 p.m. a special unit officer riding pillion on a motorcycle fired a pellet shotgun at him from behind. CCTV footage shows him walking into an alley and collapsing. Security forces had closed the street and no ambulance could reach him, so people took him in a private car to Imam Khomeini Hospital, where he arrived at 9:45 p.m. and died about fifteen minutes later. A witness told VOA Persian that the hospital gave him no real care.

The forensic certificate gave the cause of death as hemorrhagic shock after perforation of the lungs, liver and spleen by numerous high-velocity projectiles (hunting pellets). A source told VOA Persian that about 95 pellets struck his neck, head and lower back; his mother told Shargh she was later told there were 96 pellets in his body. HRANA's Spreading Justice project studied the forensic documents, spoke to eyewitnesses and concluded that he was killed by shotgun pellets fired by FARAJA police forces, a weapon it describes as lethal at less than 40 meters.

The body was withheld and handed over two days later, only after relatives signed written pledges not to say anything provocative at the funeral. A source told VOA Persian that officials told the family to stay silent and they would declare Mohammad a martyr, blaming the killing on the MEK. He was buried in Valashkola, his mother's family village near Sari, under the control of security agents; the authorities also stopped the fortieth-day memorial although the family had booked a mosque. Judicial officials later told his mother that no footage of the killing existed and the killer could not be identified.

His mother, Mahsa Yazdani, was arrested on 31 Mordad 1402 over her online posts and released on bail with an electronic tag. Branch 1 of the Sari Revolutionary Court sentenced her to a total of 13 years in prison, five of them enforceable, and the appeals court upheld the ruling, the Boroumand Center and Iran International (reporting Shargh's interview) said.

Amnesty International's 2026 report Lives Cut Brutally Short lists MOHAMMAD JAVAD ZAHEDI, age 20, fatal incident 21 September 2022, Sari, Mazandaran. HRANA's 82-day report lists Mohammad Javad Zahedi Saravi, 20, Sari, bullet wound, Confirmed, as #202 in its list of the dead with the date 23 September 2022; earlier memorial lists give 31 Shahrivar 1401 (22 September 2022).