Abolfazl Babanezhad

Abolfazl Babanezhad Harikandeh (Persian: ابوالفضل بابانژاد هریکنده), also remembered as Milad, was born on 14 Azar 1382 (5 December 2003) in the village of Harikandeh in Babol County, Mazandaran Province, and was his parents' only child. Tall and athletic, he went to the gym regularly, followed football and supported Esteghlal. After high school he did his military service, and when it ended he wrote in a story: "The tax of youth has been paid." He ran a small online business designing "audio frames," pictures carrying a code that played a customer's chosen song or film when scanned. For Nowruz 1404 he gave himself an unusual gift: an organ donor card.

During the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 1401 he had shared images of victims such as Mahsa Amini, Kian Pirfalak, Hamidreza Rouhi and Abolfazl Adinehpour. In a birthday story that year he wrote: "This year's birthday is the strangest of my life. But I wish that next year, when I blow out the candles, we will be free." On Thursday, 8 January 2026 (18 Dey 1404), he went into the streets during the protests in Babol with his close friend Seyed Mohammad Hashemi, and both were shot dead with military ammunition. He was twenty-two; some early lists gave twenty. He was buried in the martyrs' section of the Harikandeh village cemetery, and his friend was laid to rest near him. At his fortieth-day memorial a large crowd gathered with drums and mourning dance; his car was decorated with flowers, and a wedding tray and a groom's suit were placed beside his grave.