Abdorrahman Boroumand Center

for Human Rights in Iran

https://www.iranrights.org
Memorial
Omid, a memorial in defense of human rights in Iran
One Person’s Story

Ayub (Ribaz) Salehivand

About

Age: 20
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam (Sunni)
Civil Status: Single

Case

Date of Killing: November 22, 2022
Location of Killing: Haji Mamian Village, Mahabad, Azarbaijan-e Gharbi Province, Iran
Mode of Killing: Extrajudicial shooting
Charges: Unknown charge

Human rights violations in this case

Extrajudicial killings

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a long history of politically motivated violence in Iran and around the world. Since the 1979 Revolution, Islamic Republic operatives inside and outside the country have engaged in kidnapping, disappearing, and killing a large number of individuals whose activities they deemed undesirable. The actual number of the victims of extrajudicial killings inside Iran is not clear; however, these murders began in February 1979, with the murder of Parviz Sayyah Sina, an Anglican Bishop, and have continued since then, both inside and outside Iran. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has so far identified over 500 extrajudicial killings outside Iran attributed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.(1)

Dissidents have been assassinated by the agents of the Islamic Republic outside Iran, where one of the first assassinations, that of a Navy Officer, Shahriar Shafiq, took place in Paris in December 1979. These assassinations have taken place in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Dubai, Iraq, and Turkey in the Middle East; Cyprus, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain in Europe; and the United States across the Atlantic Ocean. In too many cases, states have failed to guarantee the victims’ rights to the truth, justice, and remedy; states have revealed little about the assassinations and have not issued arrest warrants. Where there have been arrests and prosecutions, available information reveals a state policy of eliminating perceived enemies. 

Documentation, evidence, and traces obtained through investigations conducted by local police and judicial authorities confirm, however, the theory of state committed crimes. In certain cases, these investigations have resulted in the expulsion (The Netherlands, 2018) or arrest (Brussels, 2020; Turkey, 2021) of Iranian diplomats. In limited cases outside Iran, the perpetrators of these murders have been arrested and put on trial (Paris 1980 and 1991) and the evidence presented, revealed the defendants’ connection to Iran’s government institutions, and an arrest warrant (the Mikonos Trial in Germany) has been issued for Iran’s then-Minister of Information, Ali Fallahian and the Deputy Minister of Telecommunications, Hossein Sheikh Attar.

The manner in which these killings were organized and implemented in Iran and abroad, is indicative of a single pattern which, according to Roland Chatelin, the Swiss prosecutor, contains common parameters and detailed planning. It can be ascertained from the similarities between these murders in different countries that the Iranian government is the principal entity who ordered the implementation of these crimes. (2). In 1997, the Berlin Criminal Court, in charge of hearing the case of the shooting of Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant, officially announced that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s highest-ranking officials had issued the order to carry out the killings. According to the indictment, the decision to commit the murders was made in a committee called the “Special Operations Committee” composed of the President, the Minister of Information and Security (VAVAK), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, representatives of the various security organs and other organizations, and finally, the Leader of the Revolution. 

Iranian authorities have not officially accepted responsibility for these murders and have even attributed their commission to internal strife in opposition groups. Nevertheless, since the very inception of the Islamic Republic regime, the Islamic Republic officials have justified these crimes from an ideological and legal standpoint. In the spring of 1979, Sadeq Khalkhali, the first Chief Shari’a Judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts, officially announced the regime’s decision to implement extrajudicial executions, and justified the decision: “ … These people have been sentenced to death; from the Iranian people’s perspective, if someone wants to assassinate these individuals abroad, in any country, no government has any right to bring the perpetrator to trial as a terrorist, because such a person is the implementing agent of the sentence issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Therefore, they are Mahduroddam (“one whose blood may be spilled, whose life can be taken, without the perpetrator incurring any punishment”) and their sentence is death regardless of where they are [and where you find them].” 

More than 10 years after these proclamations, in a speech about the security forces’ success, Ali Fallahian, the regime’s Minister of Information stated the following regarding the elimination of members of the opposition: “ … We have had success in inflicting damage to many of these little groups outside the country and on our borders” (Speech broadcast on the state-run Iranian Radio and Television on August 31, 1992, quoted from Asr Iran, August 17, 2006).

Extrajudicial killings have rarely been pursued legally in Iran. The few murders that were followed up on in 1998 , which came to be known as “the Serial (Chain) Murders(3),” have brought to light the involvement and responsibility of the country’s Information officials. Several Ministry of Information agents who were defendants in the Serial Murders case, confirmed the existence of a long term government policy of extrajudicial killings and emphasized that there was planning on an annual basis to carry out these executions, for which a religious decree was issued. There was a budget allocated and there were objectives set, and those who participated in the murders were commended. In a lecture given at [the city of] Hamedan’s Bu Ali University in 1996, Sa’eed Emami, Ministry of Information Deputy Minister for Security Affairs and one of the principal defendants in the Serial Murders case – who was later said by Iranian officials to have committed suicide while in detention – had stressed that the activities of Iran’s security forces were not confined to the country’s borders: “ … We have set the security perimeter within the confines of our borders. [However,] if we see threats infiltrating inside the country from abroad, we will enlarge the perimeter.”

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1) Among the first known murders that occurred a week after the February 1979 Revolution was that of Mr. Parviz (Arastu) Sayyah Sina, the bishop of a church in the city of Shiraz. The assassination of Mr. Shahriar Shafiq, an Imperial Navy officer, in December 1979 in Paris is among the first murders committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran outside the country. ​​These killings continued in the following years inside and outside the country and in various forms.
2) Investigations into the murder of well-known personalities in France, Germany and Switzerland have yielded evidence and documentation showing that the officials and employees of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran acted as accomplices and principals [in the killings]. In France, the Islamic Republic’s Deputy Minister of Post and Telegraph was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for the murder of former Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar and his assistant, Sorush Katibeh. In Germany (Berlin), the Islamic Republic’s security agents and agents of the Lebanese Hezbollah were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of four Kurdish opposition leaders. In connection with the latter case, German Judicial authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Ali Fallahian, the then-Minister of Information. 
3) A few days before Mr. Mokhtari’s murder, Dariush Foruhar and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari, leaders of the People of Iran Party, had been killed in a most heinous manner in their own home. After Mr. Mokhtari’s body was found, the body of Mohammad Ja’far Puyandeh, another well-known literary figure, was discovered in a village near the city of Karaj. These four individuals’ cases was named the “Serial Murders”.
Human rights violations

Based on the available information, the following human rights may have been violated in this case:

  • The right to liberty and security of the person. The right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 9.1.

  • The right not to be punished for any crime on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence, under national or international law, at the time it was committed. 

UDHR, Article 11.2; ICCPR, Article 15, Article 6.2. 

  • The right not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation. 

UDHR, Article 12, ICCPR, Article 17.1. 

  • The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to change and manifest one’s religion or belief.

UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 18.1, ICCPR, Article 18.2; Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, Article 1 and Article 6.

In its general comment 22 (48) of 20 July 1993, the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee observed that the freedom to "have or to adopt" a religion or belief necessarily entailed the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one’s current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views, as well as the right to retain one’s religion or belief. Article 18, paragraph 2, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights bars coercion that would impair the right to have or adopt a religion or belief, including the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers to adhere to religious beliefs and congregations, to recant their religion or belief or to convert.

  • The right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas.

UDHR, Article 19; ICCPR, Article 19.1 and ICCPR, Article 19.2.

  • The right to freedom of peaceful assembly. 

UDHR, Article 20; ICCPR, Article 21.

  • The right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of one’s interests.

UDHR, Article 20; ICCPR, Article 22.1.

  • The right, as a member of a religious or ethnic minority, to enjoy one’s own culture or to profess and practice one’s own religion. 

UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 27.

  • The right to equality before the law and the right to equal protection of the law. 

UDHR, Article 7; ICCPR, Article 26.

The right to due process

  • The right to be presumed innocent until found guilty by a competent and impartial tribunal in accordance with law.

ICCPR, Article 14.1 and Article 14.2.

Pre-trial detention rights

  • The right to know promptly and in detail the nature and cause of the charges against one.

UDHR, Article 9(2); ICCPR, Article 9.2 and Article 14.3.a

  • The right to counsel of one’s own choosing or the right to legal aid. The right to communicate with one’s attorney in confidence

ICCPR, Article 14.3.b and Article 14.3.d; Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, Article 1, Article 2, Article 5, Article 6, and Article 8.

  • The right to adequate time and facilities for the preparation of the defense case.

ICCPR, Article 14.3.b.

  • The right not to be compelled to testify against oneself or to confess to guilt.

ICCPR, Article 14.3.g.

  • The right not to be subjected to torture and to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

ICCPR, Article 7; Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Article 1 and Article 2.

Trial rights

  • The right to a fair and public trial without undue delay.

ICCPR, Article 14.1, Article 14.3.c.

  • The right to examine, or have examined, the witnesses against one, and the right to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on one’s behalf under the same conditions as prosecution witnesses.

ICCPR, Article 14.3.d and Article 14.3.e.

  • The right to have the decision rendered in public.

ICCPR, Article 14.1.

Judgment rights

  • The right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction.

ICCPR, Article 14.5.

  • The right to seek pardon or commutation of sentence.

ICCPR, Article 6.4.

  • The right not to be tried or punished again for an offence for which one has already been 

convicted or acquitted. 

ICCPR, Article 14.7.

Capital punishment

  • The inherent right to life, of which no one shall be arbitrarily deprived.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 6.1; Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, Article 1.1, Article 1.2.

  • The right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

ICCPR, Article 7; Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Article 1 and Article 2.

About this Case

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Joint explanation of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (Network) and the "Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABC): This case is a part of the collaborative documentation of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network intends to gradually document cases of extrajudicial executions of Kurdish citizens and activists. For this purpose, the network has used the experiences and research methodology of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, which has been active in the field of documenting human rights violations in Iran for many years. The report of this case and subsequent reports will be published in the "documentation" section of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network website and the "Omid Memorial" of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center. Some of the original and follow-up interviews used in this documentation were conducted by the Center, some by the Network, and some in collaboration.

Information about the extrajudicial execution of Mr. Ayoub (Ribaz) Salehivand, son of Abdullah Salehivand and Khadija Aramidehnia, was obtained via interviews on two different occasions with one of the family's relatives (March 4, 2022, and September 6, 2023) and another, with one of his friends (August 21, 2023). To complete this case’s information, the material was obtained from Mr. Salehivand's personal Instagram page, Kurdistan Human Rights Network reports (November 23, 2022), BBC Persian on X social media network, formerly known as Twitter (November 23, 2022) and Mr. Salehivand's death certificate. 

Mr. Salehivand was born on September 30, 2002, to a Kurdish and Sunni family. He spent his childhood and elementary education in Yusefkand village, Mahabad Township, in West Azerbaijan Province. According to one of Mr. Salehivand's close relatives, given that his “interests” did not correspond with the "scholastic system," he dropped out in the last year of high school and turned to industrial jobs. He was a construction rebar master and worked with his uncle. Mr. Salehivand was also interested in tattooing. He was self-taught and learned the art of tattooing from his friends (Interview with a relative, February 20, 2023). 

In the summer of 2022, as the protests against the murder of Jina (Mahsa) Amini took off, despite his family's opposition and the violence of the security forces, Mr. Salehivand participated in many demonstrations. According to one of his relatives, in response to his family's opposition to his participation in the protests, he said: "It doesn't matter what happens to me; if we don't go, who will go to the protests? It is my responsibility and duty to participate." According to the interviewee, he and other protesters lit a fire on the main Mahabad-Orumieh road near his village during one of the protests (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). 

According to the same source, Mr. Salehivand had a "very fearless and courageous" personality, was interested in Kurdistan's political issues, and was familiar with "Kurdish history and the region." He was also an "introvert," and his speech was measured (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). 

2022 (Mahsa Amini) Protest background

Nationwide protests were sparked by the death in custody of 22-year old Kurdish woman Jina (Mahsa) Amini on September 16, 2022. Amini had been arrested by the morality police in Tehran for improper veiling on September 13 and sent brain dead to the hospital. The protests, which started in front of the hospital and continued in the city of Saqqez (Kordestan Province), where Mahsa was buried, were triggered by popular exasperation over the morality patrols, misleading statements of the authorities regarding the cause of Mahsa’s death and the resulting impunity for the violence used against detainees, as well as the mandatory veil in general. This protest, initially led by young girls and women who burned their veils and youth in general who chanted the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom,” rapidly took on a clear anti-regime tone, with protesters calling for an end to the Islamic Republic. The scope and duration of the protest was unprecedented. State efforts to withdraw the morality police from the streets and preventative arrests of journalists and political and civil society activists did not stop the protests. By the end of December 2022, protests had taken place in about 164 cities and towns, including localities that had never witnessed protests. Close to 150 universities, high schools, businesses, and groups including oil workers, merchants of the Tehran bazaar (among others), teachers, lawyers (at least 49 of whom had been arrested as of February 1st, 2023), artists, athletes, and even doctors joined these protests in various forms. Despite the violent crackdown and mass arrests, intense protests continued for weeks, at least through November 2022, with reports of sporadic activity continuing through the beginning of 2023.

The State’s crackdown was swift and accompanied by intermittent landline and cellular internet network shutdowns, as well as threats against and arrests of victims’ family members, factors which posed a serious challenge to monitoring protests and documenting casualties. The security forces used illegal, excessive, and lethal force with handguns, shotguns, and military assault rifles against protesters. They often targeted protesters’ heads and chests, shot them at close range, and in the back. Security forces have targeted faces with pellets, causing hundreds of protesters to lose their eyesight, and according to some reports women’s genitalia. The bloodiest crackdown took place on September 30th in Zahedan, Baluchestan Province, where a protest began at the end of the Friday sermon. The death toll is reported to be above 90 for that day. Many injured protesters, fearing arrest, did not go to hospitals where security forces have reportedly arrested injured protesters before and after they were treated.

By February 1, 2023, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported the number of recorded protests to be 1,262. The death toll, including protesters and passersby, stood at 527, of whom 71 were children. The number of arrests (including of wounded protesters) was estimated at 19,603, of whom 766 had already been tried and convicted. More than 100 protesters were at risk of capital punishment, and four had been executed in December 2022 and January 2023 without minimum standards of due process. Authorities also claimed 70 casualties among state forces, though there are consistent reports from families of killed protesters indicating authorities have pressured them to falsely register their loved ones as such. Protesters, human rights groups, and the media have reported cases of beatings, torture (including to coerce confessions), and sexual assaults. Detainees have no access to lawyers during interrogations and their confessions are used in courts as evidence.

Public support and international solidarity with protesters have also been unprecedented (the use of the hashtag #MahsaAmini in Farsi and English broke world records) and on November 24, 2022, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling for the creation of a fact finding mission to “Thoroughly and independently investigate alleged human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran related to the protests that began on 16 September 2022, especially with respect to women and children.” Mahabad was one of the most important epicenters of the "Women, Life, Freedom" uprising. Protests in Mahabad continued for months, and an oppressive security atmosphere presided over this city. During these protests, at least 12 protesters were killed by security and military forces in Mahabad; several protesters were arrested, many of whom were injured. 

Background of Extrajudicial Killings by the Islamic Republic of Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a long history of politically motivated violence in Iran and around the world. Since the 1979 Revolution, Islamic Republic operatives inside and outside the country have engaged in kidnapping, disappearing, and killing a large number of individuals whose activities they deemed undesirable. The actual number of the victims of extrajudicial killings inside Iran is not clear; however, these murders began in February 1979 and have continued since then, both inside and outside Iran. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has so far identified over 540 killings outside Iran attributed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dissidents have been assassinated by the agents of the Islamic Republic outside Iran in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Dubai, Iraq, and Turkey in the Middle East; Cyprus, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain in Europe; and the United States across the Atlantic Ocean. In most cases, there has not been much published, and local authorities have not issued arrest warrants. But documentation, evidence, and traces obtained through investigations conducted by local police and judicial authorities confirm the theory of state committed crimes. In some instances, these investigations have resulted in the expulsion or arrest of Iranian diplomats. In a few cases outside Iran, the perpetrators of these murders have been arrested and put on trial. The evidence presented revealed the defendants’ connection to Iran’s government institutions, and an arrest warrant has been issued for Iran’s Minister of Information.

The manner in which these killings were organized and implemented in Iran and abroad is indicative of a single pattern which, according to Roland Chatelin, the Swiss prosecutor, contains common parameters and detailed planning. It can be ascertained from the similarities between these murders in different countries that the Iranian government is the principal entity that ordered the implementation of these crimes. Iranian authorities have not officially accepted responsibility for these murders and have even attributed their commission to internal strife in opposition groups. Nevertheless, since the very inception of the Islamic Republic regime, the Islamic Republic officials have justified these crimes from an ideological and legal standpoint. In the spring of 1979, Sadeq Khalkhali, the first Chief Shari’a Judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts, officially announced the regime’s decision to implement extrajudicial executions and justified the decision: “ … These people have been sentenced to death; from the Iranian people’s perspective, if someone wants to assassinate these individuals abroad, in any country, no government has any right to bring the perpetrator to trial as a terrorist, because such a person is the implementing agent of the sentence issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Therefore, they are Mahduroddam and their sentence is death regardless of where they are.” More than 10 years after these proclamations, in a speech about the security forces’ success, Ali Fallahian, the regime’s Minister of Information, stated the following regarding the elimination of members of the opposition: “ … We have had success in inflicting damage to many of these little groups outside the country and on our borders.”

At the same time, various political, judicial, and security officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran have, at different times and occasions, confirmed the existence of a long term government policy for these extrajudicial killings and in some cases their implementation. 

Read more about the background of extrajudicial killings in the Islamic Republic of Iran by clicking on the left hand highlight with the same title.

Mr. Ribaz Salehivand’s death 

Mr. Ribaz Salehivand was shot by the security forces on the morning of Tuesday, November 22, 2022, near the village of "Haji Mamian" in Mahabad, and died a few hours later due to the severity of his injuries (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023, Kurdistan Human Rights Network reports, November 22 and 23, 2022). 

According to one of the relatives, Mr. Salehivand was previously monitored by an individual affiliated with the security forces who approached him under the pretext of friendship (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). According to one of Mr. Salehivand's friends, this individual from the village of Yusefkand, who Mr. Salehivand had met at work, had concocted a plan to befriend Mr. Salehivand during the 2022 protests; he visited Mr. Salehivand at his place of work often and was, therefore, able to keep tabs on him (Interview with one of his friends, August 21, 2023). Mr. Salehivand told his family in the days leading up to his killing that he felt his name and details had been "reported" to the security forces. He also believed that "while burning tires to block a street during the Mahabad protests," as well as "during the attack on the home of a local member of the Revolutionary Guards,” he was filmed (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023) 

According to the same source, the night before he was killed, Mr. Salehivand had told his family that due to fear of arrest, he and a friend were planning to stay at his grandmother's house in Mangurayati district for a while. According to footage recovered from cameras along the road, which belonged to private house gardens, Mr. Salehivand, instead of going to work, rode a motorcycle along Haji Mamian Road in Mahabad with the individual posing as his friend in tow. They drove in the direction of Mangurayati. But to go to this destination, he should have taken a different route than the area where he was killed (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). 

The exact time and manner of Mr. Salehivand's murder unclear, but the only person accompanying him called Mr. Salehivand's father around 11:15 a.m. and informed him that his son Ribaz had been injured. When Mr. Salehivand's father arrived on the scene, he was still alive and could breathe, though his body was covered in blood. Fearing arrest, the family took their child to his grandmother and grandfather's house in Mahabad instead of the hospital. As the family was getting medical support, Mr. Salehivand died due to the severity of his injury (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). 

Mr. Salehivand's companion claimed that they were attacked by the passengers of two Peugeot "GLX" automobiles with tinted windows and a beige 3F vehicle near the village of Mazra, next to an iron bridge on the way to a military barracks. However, there is no evidence to show that Mr. Salehivand was shot while he was on the motorcycle. According to one of the relatives, dozens of pellet gunshots hit Mr. Salehivand's back, but certainly, none of the bullets hit Mr. Salehivand's companion, and there were no gunshot marks on the motorcycle. Additionally, while washing Mr. Salehivand's body, other than the dozens of bullet wounds on his body, they noticed that "he had a contusion on his head and that there was a blow to his abdomen" (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023, and September 5 and 6, 2023). 

In the death certificate, the cause of Mr. Salehivand's death is stated as "collision with hard or sharp objects" (archive documents). 

Mr. Salehivand's body was buried in the Yusefkand village of Mahabad on Tuesday, November 22, in the presence of family members, acquaintances, and a large crowd of people, despite the restrictions of the IRGC forces (BBC Persian Twitter, November 23, 2022, Kurdistan Human Rights Network Twitter, November 23, 2023). 

Mr. Salehivand was only 21 years old at the time of his murder. 

Official Reaction 

According to one of the relatives, IRGC forces surrounded Mahabad’s city entrance and prevented them from burying him in Bagh-e Ferdows in this city; the family was forced to bury Mr. Salehivand in the Yousefkand village cemetery, a few kilometers from Mahabad (Interview with a relative, November 23, 2022, Kurdistan Human Rights Network channel, November 23, 2022). 

The intelligence officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who were sent from Tehran to Orumieh, summoned his family members a few days after Mr. Salehivand's funeral. These officers interrogated them in front of cameras for eight days (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). 

According to one of the relatives, during the interrogation of the family members, the IRGC agents claimed that Mr. Salehivand played the role of "leader" in the Mahabad protests (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). 

According to the interviewee, the individual who was with Mr. Salehivand at the time of the murder has not been seen again since the fourth day after the burial (Interview with a relative, March 4, 2023). 

Family’s Reaction 

There is no accurate information about Mr. Salehivand's family’s reaction to his murder. According to the videos released from the funeral ceremony, his father, Mr. Abdullah Salehivand, after calling for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan, said, "Today my son was martyred, but tomorrow it will be your children's turn." He also condemned the "collaboration of Kurdish forces with security institutions in shedding the blood of Kurdistan's youth" (Telegram of Kurdistan Human Rights Network, November 23, 2022). 

Impact on the family 

There is no evidence of the effect of Mr. Salehivand's murder on his family members.

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