Iranian Man Dies Under Suspicious Circumstances After Burning Supreme Leader's Image

France:

An Iranian man has been discovered dead with a gunshot wound following his social media post showing himself burning an image of the supreme leader, with mourners attributing his death to authorities, according to opposition media outlets operating outside Iran.

Omid Sarlak, from western Iran's Lorestan province, had shared on Instagram a photo of himself setting fire to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's picture in a wooded area on Friday, shortly before being discovered dead over the weekend.

Iran's official news agency IRNA published a report citing Ali Asadollahi, the Aligudarz police chief, stating that a man was found deceased in his vehicle after allegedly taking his own life with a pistol discovered beside him.

However, during Sarlak's funeral on Monday, numerous mourners chanted slogans including "they killed him!" and "death to Khamenei," as shown in social media footage broadcast by opposition media based outside Iran, including Iran International and Radio Farda.

In his video, Sarlak, who was in his twenties, included an audio recording of deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, indicating his support for the Iranian monarchy that was overthrown during the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The exiled shah's US-based son, Reza Pahlavi, posted on X that Sarlak had "stood against the oppression of the Islamic republic and sacrificed his life for Iran's freedom."

On Monday, the Iranian Tasnim news agency rejected what it described as claims in "anti-revolution media" that Sarlak "was prosecuted for critical statements and was murdered in a suspicious manner," asserting there had been no case against him and that he had died by suicide with a gunshot to the head.

Sarlak's father appeared in a video shared on social media by Iranian opposition outlets, weeping and saying "they killed my boy."

However, he subsequently gave an interview to local state-run television urging people not to believe what they saw on social media.

Activists report that authorities are intensifying their crackdown three years after nationwide protests challenged the regime and months following the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran in June.

"External aggression has fuelled deeper internal repression," Mai Sato, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, stated last week, noting an "alarming" increase in executions and "mass arrests" of activists.