Nasrin Shakeri, Mother of Nika, Arrested

The family of Nika Shakeri, one of the victims of the protests in 2022 in Tehran, reported the arrest of Nasrin Shakeri, Nika's mother. Aida Shakeri, Nika's sister, wrote on Instagram on Wednesday evening, October 25, that "my mother was arrested this evening in Khorramabad, and I do not know the reason for her arrest or the charges against her." Nika Shakeri was one of hundreds of protesters killed during the protests following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini while in the custody of the morality police in 2022, and government agencies forced her family to bury the body of this teenager in a remote village in Khorramabad, Lorestan. One of the latest instances of government pressure on the Shakeri family occurred last month on the second anniversary of Nika Shakeri's death, when they announced that government agents had blocked access to the cemetery, preventing Nika's family from entering and being present at her grave. Seventeen-year-old Nika Shakeri disappeared on the evening of September 20, 2022, during the first protests of "Women, Life, Freedom" in Keshavarz Boulevard in Tehran, and after eight days, her body was handed over to her family. Nasrin Shakeri, Nika's mother, about two weeks later in a video message exclusively provided to Radio Farda, stated that according to the forensic certificate, the cause of her daughter's death was "multiple impacts from a hard object" to her head. However, the narrative of the Islamic Republic's news agencies during the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests was that Nika Shakeri jumped from a half-finished building near the home of her aunt, Atash Shakeri, with whom she lived, and committed suicide. The BBC World Service reported on April 29, 2024, that it had obtained a "very confidential document" from the Islamic Republic of Iran that indicated Nika Shakeri was subjected to "sexual abuse" after being arrested by security forces and was killed.