Mahdi Ghadimi

Mahdi Ghadimi Charmahini (مهدی قدیمی چرمهینی), 22, was from Charmahin in Lenjan County, Isfahan Province. He had finished his military service three months earlier and was working at a car mechanic's shop in Charmahin.

On the evening of 8 January 2026 (18 Dey 1404), at around 10 p.m., protesters gathered in Charmahin's municipality square, took down and burned the Islamic Republic flag, and then marched toward the town's Basij base. As they approached its entrance, Basij and IRGC forces inside opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles. Mahdi was shot under the arm; the bullet passed through his heart. He was taken to Shohada-ye Lenjan Hospital in Zarrinshahr, where attempts to revive him failed.

Fearing that agents would seize his body, relatives carried it out through the hospital's back door at midnight and kept watch over it until morning on the back seat of a car, because the morgue would not take him in. After an autopsy at the Isfahan forensic office, the local police made the family sign a pledge not to hold any funeral or memorial gatherings. He was buried in Charmahin early on Friday, 16 January 2026 (26 Dey 1404).

A week after the burial, officials interviewed a relative and declared him a regime "martyr". According to IranWire, his original death notices carried no such title, and a source close to the family said that he was a protester and that "a whole town bears witness that Mahdi was a protester." At his fortieth-day memorial, mourners played the song "Ey Iran" and covered his grave with flowers.