Mehdi Lavasani

Mehdi Lavasani (known to those close to him as Milad) was a youth football coach from Tehran. IranWire, drawing on a relative abroad and on friends who were with him, reported that he was 35 years old, born in Tehran in Iranian year 1369 (1990–91). From childhood he loved football; he played himself and from about age 25 turned to coaching. About five years before his death he founded the Mahan Novin football school in Tehran. He married in 1401/2022–23 and was the father of a two-year-old son. He lived in the Pasdaran area of Tehran.

A person close to him told IranWire that Lavasani had taken part in protest waves since the contested 2009 presidential election, including the November 2019 protests, gatherings after the Ukrainian airliner was shot down, and the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. The same source described him as someone who spent his life helping relatives and people in deprived areas, bringing food and clothing and playing football with their children.

On the evening of Thursday, 8 January 2026 (18 Dey 1404), according to IranWire’s account of a friend who was with him, Lavasani went from visiting family in Narmak to join protests in Tehran’s Dardasht neighborhood. Security forces first used tear gas; when the crowd dispersed they opened heavy live fire. Roughly an hour later relatives were phoned and told he had been shot. Family members reached him while he was still alive; he died in the car on the way to hospital. Hengaw Organization for Human Rights separately verified that he was shot in the back by government forces and died that evening in Tehran. IranWire’s source said the bullet struck from behind and tore part of his heart.

Fearing the body would be withheld, the family first took him toward Lavasan, hoping to bury him there the next day; they were refused and had to take the body to Kahrizak. IranWire reported that agents demanded 400 million tomans “per bullet” before releasing the body, one bullet, one payment, and forbade placards, mourning ceremonies, or public rites. Relatives described his parents as shattered and his wife as immobilized by grief.

IranWire published its feature on 15 January 2026 under the title noting that “they took money for the bullet.” Hengaw listed him among members of Iran’s sports community killed that evening, alongside Mojtaba Torshiz and Ahmad Khosravani.