Washington, 4 December (WashingtonTV)—The mother of a young Iranian woman shot dead at a protest following June’s disputed presidential election on Thursday accused the security forces of killing her daughter, and criticized efforts to portray her daughter’s death as a foreign conspiracy.
“They targeted my daughter and on that day (23 June), they killed her. Now they put on a farcical play [Persian: sia bazi] in front of the British embassy (in Tehran),” Hajar Rostami-Motlaq, the mother of Neda Aqa-Soltan, said, according to the Rahe Sabz news website.
Aqa-Soltan’s death, captured on video and uploaded to the Internet, caused international outrage against the Iranian government’s crackdown on mostly peaceful protests following the election.
A member of the Basij, a volunteer militia force under the command of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, is said to have fired the shot that killed the 26-year-old, on the sidelines of a rally in Tehran.
However, Iranian authorities, who have described the death as “suspicious”, say foreign governments and the opposition movement killed her in an attempt to smear the government.
On Wednesday, government supporters held a demonstration outside the British embassy in Tehran, calling for Arash Hejazi, the doctor who tried to save Neda’s life as she lay dying in the street, to be returned to Iran. They accused Hejazi, along with Britain, of being involved in Neda’s death.
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