‘Everyone was shot in the head’: Iranian woman who fled Tehran describes killings, repression | World news
“It was war.”
This is how a young Iranian woman describes what she saw on the streets of Tehran before she was able to flee the country on a plane bound for Dubai.
What’s happening inside? Iran Verification has become more difficult than usual after the country was plunged into an almost complete internet blackout.
For five days, most Iranians were unable to contact the outside world. Only now are limited telephone connections starting to return.
This woman, who fears for the safety of her family members still in Iran, requested that her identity not be revealed. For the purposes of this article, I will call her Layla.
She believes what she saw – and what she carried out with her – is information the world urgently needs to hear.
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“Everyone was getting shot in the head,” she says, describing the protests that broke out at night in her neighborhood in northern Tehran.
“I don’t think they have room in prisons anymore, so they just kill us.”
Leila left Iran on Sunday evening, after several days of escalating unrest that began on Thursday, when much of the country lost contact with the outside world.
She says that demonstrators gather in the streets every evening. Others shouted from the windows of their apartments: “Death to Khamenei” and “Send back.” Reza Pahlavi“, calling for the end of the Islamic Republic and the return of the Shah.
“There were lots and lots of people being sprayed with tear gas,” she says. “It burned our lips and eyes.”
She describes watching a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard point a gun at a mother sitting in a car with a young child in the back seat. The child was crying.
The woman was not shot, but others were.
“I saw two men near a mosque,” Laila says. “One of them was shot in the head.
“We hid in a side street. When we came back a few minutes later, the body was already gone.”
Laila says people she knew personally were also killed.
“My friend’s cousin was shot five times,” she says. “He died.” “People around me were being killed.”
In recent days, Iranian authorities have insisted that the situation is “under control.” State television announced that schools, banks and businesses will remain closed this week, officially due to pollution.
Laila’s novel paints a very different picture.
She says the streets were quieter during the day. People spoke in hushed voices. I heard whispered conversations: “Did you hear that my girlfriend’s brother died?”
By evening the streets were full again.
She said on Friday that the area around Tehran University resembled a war zone. On Saturday and Sunday, the protests began early, around 6 p.m.
“It wasn’t just about young people,” she says. “There were elderly people, clerics and women wearing hijabs.
“Even very Islamist people were protesting and demanding the return of the Shah.”
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Laila holds dual citizenship and was already planning to leave Iran this week. Its original flight was cancelled.
With no internet connection, she traveled to the airport herself on Sunday to see if she could get out.
After getting a seat on an Iranian airline, her mother begged her to delete the photos and videos she had taken of the protests. The images included blood-stained streets and a dead body.
She says that a member of the Iranian security services approached her at the departure gate.
“He knew my final destination,” she says. “He asked me how long I had been there and why. He asked to see my phone and look at my photos.
“I was terrified, I felt like he knew everything about me.”
She believes that if the photos had been found, she would have been imprisoned indefinitely.
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Since leaving the country, several Iranians said they had made some contact with a relative within the past 24 hours.
But Laila hasn’t heard from her mother since Sunday night.
Like many now speaking from outside the country, Laila says she wants international intervention, including from the United States.
“Without help from outside, they kill everyone,” she says. “This time, everyone took to the streets. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, religious or not, old or young.
She adds: “Everyone wants these people to leave. But it is very difficult.” “They cut off the internet. They are killing people.
“Everyone is afraid to spread information.”
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