An Iranian amateur boxer was shot and killed by Iranian security forces during ongoing anti-regime protests near Tehran, and his father spent a week searching before identifying his body in a black body bag.
Harrowing images circulating online show his distraught father desperately searching through piles of bodies covered in black body bags, screaming for his missing son.
Sepehr Ebrahimi, 19, was killed on January 11 in the Andisheh area, about 30 kilometers west of Tehran’s city center, according to Iranian opposition sources.
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Sepehr Ebrahimi was a 19-year-old amateur boxer. His father searched for his body for a week after he was killed. (Simay Azadi/National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI))
“My dear Sepehr, where are you?” the father can be heard crying. At one point he shouts: ‘Damn Khamenei. They killed so many people’s children. You killed so many young people!’
According to Safavi, Ebrahimi was shot with live ammunition by Iranian security forces during protests against the clerical regime.
His family spent an agonizing week searching morgues, hospitals and detention centers before finally identifying his body among piles of corpses, as also seen in the viral images.
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Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, January 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
The killing comes amid ongoing demonstrations across Iran as anger continues to simmer over political repression, economic hardship and human rights abuses.
Ebrahimi’s death has also drawn attention to the case of another Iranian boxer, Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani, who is on death row.
Vafaei Sani, now 30, is a champion boxer who was arrested in 2020 for participating in nationwide pro-democracy protests.
Iranian authorities accused him of supporting the opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK).
According to rights groups, he spent five years in prison, during which time he was allegedly tortured and held in solitary confinement for long periods of time.
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In 2023, more than 100 human rights experts and international organizations sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, urging urgent intervention to stop the execution of Vafaei Sani.
His death sentence echoes the case of Iranian wrestling champion Navid Afkari, who was executed in September 2020.
Meanwhile, the deaths of Ebrahimi and others come as Iran’s protest-related death toll continues to rise.
According to the Press agency for human rights activists (HRANA), at least 6,126 people have been killed since the latest wave of protests began.
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HRANA also reported that 214 government-affiliated troops and 49 civilians were also killed, with more than 17,000 deaths still under investigation.
