Mehrad Sadeghi

Mehrad Sadeghi (Persian: مهراد صادقی) was a school student from Isfahan, born on 25 Bahman 1386 / 14 February 2008, scarcely a month shy of his eighteenth birthday when live fire met the Malek Shahr district. Family-close sources told BBC Persian’s verification team he was preparing for the university entrance exam in animation, dreamed of directing animated films, and in his last months had fallen in love with cinema and theatre; he even held a ticket for a show on 20 Dey that he never got to use. He loved animals, especially his small dog, and plants; the day before he was killed he said he wanted to buy a flower every month so the house would fill with blossoms.

On the evening of Thursday, 8 January 2026 (18 Dey 1404), while walking home on a sidewalk in Malek Shahr, he was struck in the side by a military-grade round. Relatives rang his phone repeatedly until a stranger answered and said he had been hit by pellets but was alive; at the hospital they found only his lifeless body. The family brought him home and laid him on the terrace for a time before an ambulance took him to Bagh-e Rezvan Cemetery. His body was not released for five days despite repeated visits. Hengaw Organization for Human Rights independently verified his killing by direct government gunfire that evening, listing him among seven additional Isfahan Province dead, including Masoud Faghihzadeh, and recorded his age as 18. The birth date given here follows his family and the BBC account that he died about a month before turning eighteen.