Iran International
A 17-year-old protester wounded during Iran’s January protests was later killed after being taken into custody by security forces, according to testimony and forensic analysis gathered by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC).
Human rights investigators say evidence indicates Sam Afshari was alive when security forces detained him in the city of Karaj, but was later killed by a gunshot wound to the head consistent with an execution carried out after his arrest.
“The bullet entered through the back of his head and exited through his face," Shahin Milani, IHRDC Executive Director told Iran International.
"The injury he sustained during the protests was not the shot that killed him,” Milani said.
Before leaving to join the protests, Sam sent a final message to his father on Jan 7.
“Dad, don’t tell mom anything. I’m going to fight for my rights. Iran is in danger. Please don’t tell my mother.”
His father, Parviz Afshari, who lives in Germany, would spend days searching for answers after his son disappeared.
According to Milani, testimony gathered from the family indicates that Sam’s initial injury during the protests was not fatal.
Residents living nearby Taleghani Square in Karaj saw that Sam had been wounded and attempted to bring him inside to help. Before they could do so, security forces arrived and dragged him away while he was still alive, according to his father’s account.
"The inhuman repressive forces dragged my son," Parviz told IRHDC in a video recording.
After that, he vanished.
“When his family eventually recovered his body, it was clear he had been shot again,” Milani said.
Where the fatal shooting occurred remains unclear. Sam’s father received conflicting accounts — one suggesting it may have happened at a medical facility and another claiming detainees were shot while being transported. Investigators say those details cannot yet be independently confirmed, but the available evidence indicates he was killed after arrest.
Sam's father described him as an exceptionally talented teenager — a computer science prodigy, a competitive swimming champion and fluent in multiple languages.
Milani said interviewing the father was deeply personal, underscoring how the profile of victims in Iran has changed over time.
“The father is nearly my age,” Milani said. “It forces you to realize that the young people being killed today are children who could have been our own.”
Sam Afshari’s case is part of a broader pattern emerging from Iran’s January crackdown, during which students and minors were among those killed. An Iranian teachers’ union has published the names of roughly 200 students killed during the protests, describing the list as both a record of loss and a demand for accountability.
At least 24 children, including a three-year-old, were killed by direct fire from security forces during Iran’s nationwide protests, according to the HANA Human Rights Organization. The group said it confirmed the identities of the children through on-the-ground research and cross-checking multiple sources.
HANA said the shooting of children was not an isolated incident but part of a systematic pattern, with gunfire in many documented cases directed at vital parts of the body.
For Sam's father - the loss is already painfully clear — a teenager who left home believing he was fighting for his future and never returned.
Sam had been preparing to join him in Germany later this year — a plan that ended before it could begin.
