Demonstrator killed in Arg Mosque

Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2023-4-25

Once, we gathered in front of Tehran Bazaar, Arg Square, on the day of Ashura, and distributed leaflets inside the religious groups. These leaflets had a religious background and were effective on people.

Even in one of the demonstrations in the month of Muharram, which was held under the pretext of the death of several mountaineer students, after the funeral ceremony held in the Arg mosque, we started walking from the front of the mosque and the Golestan Palace and were moving towards Shapur Street (current Vahdat-e Eslami), but the police and the Imperial Guard forces attacked us. Seyed Nasser Mousavi (a classmate of the faculty, whose life and death later became a sad story) squeezed the throat of the policeman who was hitting the Seyed on the head with a colt and knocked him to the ground. In this mood, he shot at the students and a shooting happened. This took place in the year 1353 (1974). One of the guys, whose name was Hamid Khalili, was seriously injured on that day and it was said that he had been killed. We also tried to find and help one of my friends who is now in the judicial system (Mr. Gholamreza Salmasi) but we failed. We assumed that he had fallen on the ground and had been arrested. But when I returned to the university, I surprisingly saw him. We went inside the room. He showed his coat where the bullet had hit and burned his student card. But the shape of his body while moving and running away was in such a way that the bullet had come from this side of the coat and gone out from the other side, and it was probably the same bullet that had hit the late Khalili.

I was supposed to give a speech that day in the Arg mosque. The organizer said that the guard forces did not allow and were attacking inside the mosque. Therefore, the gathering broke up and the guys started chanting slogans. According to the previous appointment with the law students (Salmasi, Mousavi and Seyedi), a group moved to the Bazar, some to Toopkhaneh Square and Lalehzar, and a group moved to Shapur Square, which led to the shootings and the martyrdom and clashes to which I pointed. The next day, the second demonstration started again in the same place, where two of my comrades (Mahmoud Dehghan and Mohammad Bai) were arrested.

Source: From Tehran University to SAVAK's Place of Torture: Narration of student Struggles and Story of Anti-Sabotage Joint Committee, an interview with Jalal Rafi, Tehran, Iran Ebrat Museum. 1384 (2005), PP. 49-50