A source close to the family informed that relatives of a girl who was killed during protests in Iran were coerced to make false claims.
16-year-old Nika Shakarami vanished from Tehran on September 20 after alerting a friend that she was being pursued by authorities.
On Wednesday night, Atash, her aunt, was quoted on state television as saying, “Nika was killed by falling from a building.”
On television, her uncle was also shown speaking out against the turmoil while someone appears to whisper, “Say it, you scumbag!”
The insider informed that these were both “forced confessions” that were extracted “after severe interrogations and threats to harm other family members.”
Authorities apprehended Atash and Nika’s uncle, Mohsen, after Atash posted online remarks about her niece’s death and spoke to the media. According to the source, the broadcasted statements were recorded before they were broadcast.
Atash told that the Revolutionary Guards informed her that Nika was in their custody for five days before being transferred to jail officials.
According to the court, on the night she vanished, Nika entered a building occupied by eight construction workers, and the next morning she was discovered dead in the yard outside.
Mohammad Shahriari, a Tehran judicial official, was quoted by state media on Wednesday as saying that an autopsy revealed Nika suffered “many fractures… in the pelvis, head, upper and lower limbs, arms and legs, indicating that the person was thrown from a height.”
This, he stated, indicated that her death had nothing to do with the protests.
According to Atash, Nika’s Instagram and Telegram accounts were also removed after she vanished. Iranian security forces are known to seek access to detainees’ social media accounts to erase the accounts or select content.
Atash was seen on Wednesday night’s state TV report confirming that her niece’s death was discovered outside the premises described by the judiciary, despite this contradicting prior comments made by her and other family members.
The family reported finding Nika’s body in the mortuary of a detention center ten days after she went missing, and that they were only permitted to view her face for a few seconds to positively identify her. Atash stated before her arrest that she did not visit the morgue.
On what would have been Nika’s 17th birthday, her family transferred her remains to her father’s hometown of Khorramabad in the west of the country on Sunday.
Under pressure from authorities, the family agreed not to arrange a public burial. However, according to the source, security personnel “stole” Nika’s body from Khorramabad and buried it in the village of Veysian, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) away.
Later, hundreds of protestors gathered in Khorramabad’s cemetery and yelled anti-government slogans, including “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Nika was not the only young female protester killed during the unrest that erupted last month following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman arrested by the Islamic Republic’s morality police for allegedly breaching the tight hijab legislation.
Hadis Najafi, 22 years old, was shot and killed by security forces on September 21 while protesting in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran. Officials reportedly requested that her father state that she died of a heart attack.
