Error occured during this request! Please try again later.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iranian police on Thursday shot dead a Kurdish teenager in the city of Kermanshah and critically wounded another in a car chase, a Kurdish rights watchdog said on Friday.
“Yesterday evening around 19:00, a police patrol car in Dolatabad … chased a Peugeot 405 vehicle because it reportedly did not have a number plate,” a relative of Ashkan Azizi, who was killed in the incident, told the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network. “Then they sprayed the vehicle with bullets and Ashkan Azizi was killed instantly.” His friend Burhan Azizi was seriously wounded.
“The occupants of the vehicle who were under the age of 18 panicked because they did not have a driving license,” the relative said, adding that the car’s number plate was displayed in the rear window.
The family have lodged a complaint for ‘unjust killing’ and have yet to receive Azizi’s body, which is still being held by authorities.
“We have lodged a complaint but we have not received any explanation,” they said, refusing to be named for fear of reprisals.
Iranian media are yet to report about the incident.
Dolatabad, a deprived area of Kermanshah in western Iran, saw fierce protests last November when hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest against a government decision to raise the price of petrol. At least five protesters were shot dead by security forces and hundreds were arrested.
The Iranian police, officially known as the “Disciplinary Force”, and other security forces are regularly involved in serious human rights violations against citizens, according to human rights organisations and the UN Special Rapporteur.
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran Javaid Rehman regularly warns about Iranian’s security forces abuses in particular during last year’s protests.
“The use of excessive force by security forces during the November protests demonstrate a serious violation of the right to life. The Islamic Republic of Iran, as a State party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is required to undertake all necessary measures to prevent arbitrary deprivation of life by law enforcement officials,” Rehman said in a report to the UN General Assembly in July.
In a similar incident in the city of Shahriar near Tehran, police forces killed two young men on a motorbike on September 21.
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the two men panicked after police officers asked for their license and tried to run away from the scene but were shot. One died instantly and the other was handcuffed while wounded and died shortly afterwards.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment