Taha Safari

Taha Safari Palangari was a 16-year-old vocational high-school student and amateur boxer from Azna, Lorestan Province. He was born on 5 June 2009 (15 Khordad 1388) in the village of Palangari, Kamfiruz, Fars Province, to Samaneh and Ahmadreza. Because of his parents’ separation, he lived with his mother in Azna during the school year, where he studied accounting at a vocational school, and spent summers with his father in Palangari.

On the evening of 1–2 January 2026 (11–12 Dey 1404), Taha joined protests in Azna that began near the Pich-e Sangag neighborhood and spread as security forces used tear gas and live fire. Witnesses told BBC Persian that he was shot and then detained; his name did not appear in hospital records. On 3 January 2026, the Khorramabad Intelligence Office notified the family that he had died. Relatives and human-rights monitors report that authorities pressured the family to bury him quietly and to describe the death as an “accident,” and that his body was identifiable largely by his jacket because of facial gunshot wounds.

BBC Persian independently verified Taha’s identity among early victims of the Dey 1404 crackdown. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation and Hengaw likewise documented his killing as an extrajudicial shooting of a minor. Despite security pressure, a fortieth-day memorial was later held in Palangari village.