Sarina Saadi

Sarina Saadi (Persian: سارینا ساعدی; also written Saedi or Sa'edi) was a schoolgirl from the Naysar neighborhood of Sanandaj in Kurdistan Province, born on 19 Mehr 1386 (11 October 2007), the daughter of Hashem and Farideh. Her parents separated when she was small and she grew up largely in her grandmother's care: Zamaneh Media says she lived at her maternal grandmother's house, while the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center says she and her younger brother were raised by their father and grandmother. She is not the same person as Sarina Esmailzadeh of Karaj.

The Boroumand Center describes her as a hardworking, well-liked ninth-grade student who dreamed of becoming a university professor or a doctor and often said: "I want to be useful to myself, my family, and society." She openly protested the killing of Mahsa Amini, and when her family worried about her going to the protests she answered: "Mahsa Amini, Hadis Najafi, and Sarina Esma'ilzadeh were girls like me who were killed! Why shouldn't I go? They also had parents."

On Wednesday 4 Aban 1401 (26 October 2022), the fortieth day after Mahsa Amini's death, protests broke out in Sanandaj and Naysar. Hengaw, Hana Human Rights Organization and Zamaneh Media report that security forces struck her on the head with batons. An informed person told the Boroumand Center that she and several friends had been writing protest slogans on walls when masked agents on motorcycles attacked them, and that she was hit twice on the back of the head while trying to protect her friends. Her maternal uncle, Fereydoon Nosrati, told Zamaneh that she came home confused, with dusty clothes, said she had tripped, and refused to see a doctor. She fell asleep and was found unresponsive the next afternoon. At Tohid Hospital in Sanandaj the family was told she had suffered baton blows to the head, and Hengaw reports that she died of a brain hemorrhage on Thursday 27 October 2022. The Boroumand Center's account dates the attack to 27 October and the discovery to the afternoon of 28 October.

Security forces came to the hospital, took her phone and her father's, and warned relatives that they would be arrested if they spoke about her death. State television aired an interview in which her father, head down, said she had taken her own life over family problems; Zamaneh and the Boroumand Center report that he was pressured into it in exchange for her body, and Iran International later reported that he rejected the suicide and drug claims. The governor of Sanandaj, Hassan Asgari, told state television that the preliminary cause was an accident or suicide with psychoactive drugs. Her death certificate, issued on 31 October 2022, gives the cause as "unknown". She was buried at night under heavy security at Behesht-e Mohammadi cemetery in Sanandaj with only a few relatives allowed to attend (accounts range from six or seven to about twenty), and a person involved in the burial told the Boroumand Center that her head showed two indentations and bruising. Security forces also ordered a second mourning ceremony in the family's village, Gerger-e Olya, to end.

Amnesty International's 2026 report Lives Cut Brutally Short lists SARINA SAEDI, age 15, fatal incident 26 October 2022, Sanandaj, Kurdistan. HRANA's report on the first 82 days of the protests lists Sarina Saedi, 16, Sanandaj, 26 October 2022, cause "assault", as #265 in its list of the dead (Confirmed; source Kurdpa). Hengaw and the Boroumand Center also give her age as 16, and a source of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network gave 17.