A young Kurdish man arrested by Iranian police on “drug-related” charges in Tehran on 7 April, has lost his life suspiciously in a police detention centre.
The family of the 25-year-old Milad Jafari, from Kermanshah in western Iran, claimed that their son had lost his life due to “torture”.
“Milad Jafari was violently arrested by officers of the Criminal Investigation Department on 7 April, along with a friend named Omid, at the Afsarieh intersection in Tehran. A few days later, after repeated follow-ups by the family, the department of forensic medicine in Kahrizak, Tehran [province], called the family and asked them to go there and receive the body”, said a relative of the young man in an interview with the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
The source added that at the department of forensic medicine, photos of Jafari’s body were shown to his father, and he was told that the young man had lost his life due to various reasons such as “suicide” and “falling from a height” during his arrest.
However, marks of bruises on the body and bleeding on his face could be seen in the photos.
The family was also told that their son’s body had been transferred to the department of forensic medicine in Kahrizak on 8 April. But the police said the young man lost his life on 11 April.
Jafari’s family refused to take the body until they received autopsy results as the cause of their son’s death was unclear.