Iranians injured by security forces during ongoing protests across the country are avoiding treatment in increasingly dangerous hospitals for fear of being arrested, tortured, prosecuted, or killed. Paramedics are willing to help injured people at their own risk and treat protesters at their offices, at protesters’ homes, or elsewhere. 36-year-old Aida Rostami was one of them. She treated protesters in Ekbatan and other western districts of Tehran until she went missing earlier this week. A day later, her tortured body was handed over to her family. After tending to several injured protesters in Ekbatan on December 12, Rostami found himself short of medical supplies, including sterile gas, a source close to the family told Iranwire.
The doctor left the protesters’ homes to get what they needed and was never seen alive again. The following day, his family received a call from the local police station to say that Rostami had died overnight in a car accident. They were told to pick up the bodies at the morgue. A source at Iranwire said a car crash was “definitely” not the cause of her death. “The coroner told the family they were instructed not to reveal the true cause of Aida’s death. They said she didn’t die in a car accident, they killed her.”
Security officials allowed relatives to see the bodies, but only after they insisted. “Her hands can’t be broken, her abdomen injured, her eyes completely dropped while driving in an accident.” The family asked the police to show Rostami’s car and the location where the car crash allegedly took place, but to no avail. Rostami was buried in Gorgan, the birthplace of his family. And Ekbatan lost another doctor.
