Akam Talaj, 26-year-old Kurdish student and one of those wounded during the May 7 uprising of people of Mahabad, died on Monday, June 29, due to the severity of his wounds after much suffering.
He was from the city of Naqadeh and a student of Mahabad’s Free University. He was directly shot by revolutionary guards and hit by 40 pellets in the hand and stomach. He suffered internal bleeding and was hospitalized in the ICU section of a hospital in Urmia because of his critical condition.
Following the martyrdom of Mr. Talaj, the henchmen refused to hand over his body to his family fearing popular wrath. They exerted a lot of pressure on his family to bury Mr. Talaj in “Shaheedan” section of the cemetery reserved for Iranian regime’s dead, but this request by the regime met the severe reaction of Mr. Talaj’s family. Ultimately, the body was then buried in Mahabad amid strict security provisions.
Brazenly, Iranian regime’s intelligence and media called Akam Talaj as the only “wounded of the May 7 tumult of Mahabad that was shot in the gathering on May 7 by anti-revolutionary and hired elements looking to inflame the atmosphere as he was walking in the street”.
A week after the injury of Akam Talaj, elements of Iranian regime intelligence in Western Azerbaijan Province called “the incidence of the wounded suspicious and declared that the pellets that had hit the injured did not belong to the security forces”.
On May 7 people of Mahabad took to the streets to protest the death of 26-year-old Kurdish woman Farinaz Khosravani and clashed with the suppressive forces. In these clashes at least 50 people were injured by revolutionary guards’ fire and many were arrested. On May 4, Farinaz Khosravani who was running away from the aggression of an Iranian regime’s intelligence agent jumped from the fourth floor of the hotel where she worked and lost her life.
The Iranian Resistance expresses it most sincere sympathy with the family of this hero and martyr and calls on the people and the youth, especially the brave Kurdish compatriots, to express their solidarity with the families of the martyrs, as well as those who were injured and imprisoned, and to continue and expand their protests against the religious fascism ruling Iran.
The silence of the international community, in particular the United States and the European Union, in face of the atrocities of the mullahs’ rule for the sake of nuclear talks or any other excuse emboldens the mullahs to continue with their crimes and has no meaning but collaboration with the religious fascism ruling Iran.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
July 4, 2015