The husband of a woman killed on the Ukrainian airliner shot down by Iran on January 8 said he was threatened and summoned by the Intelligence Ministry for insulting regime officials. Mohammad Javad Soleimani Meimandi said he had verbally attacked the representative of the regime’s Supreme Leader and the head of Friday prayers during his wife’s funeral in Zanjan, northwestern Iran.
His wife Elnaz Nabiyi was a PhD student in the Department of Accounting, Operations and Information Systems in the Alberta School of Business.
After graduating with a master’s degree from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, she moved to Canada with her husband less than two years ago so they could both pursue PhD studies at the University of Alberta.
Javad Soleimani said that security forces threatened him on the day of her funeral and told him to “close his mouth” and that this was “the first and last warning”.
“The next morning when I was going to visit Elnaz and bid her goodbye, I was summoned by the Zanjan Intelligence Agency,” he wrote in an Instagram post.
Soleimani did not pay heed to the summons and wrote that he quickly went to Tehran and then left the country for Canada, “because he was not willing to stay quiet”.
He detailed his plight and how the regime took over his wife’s funeral in his Instagram posts.
“Until the moment Elnaz was buried, I did not say anything. After the funeral I put up a number of posts to say that the ceremony and the method it was held was forced (on us) by the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans, the IRGC and government institutions,” Soleimani wrote on Instagram.
“During the funeral, I saw an IRGC commander and Khamenei’s representative in the IRGC standing next to us as if they were the main mourners.”
Soleimani verbally attacked the two men calling them more impudent and shameless than Yazid, the infamous Caliph of Demascus who ordered the killing of Mohammad’s grandson, Hossein and his family in 680 AD. Yazid is one of the most evil figures in Shiite tradition.
“I’m happy I said this to them because it was also what Elnaz thought of them,” he wrote.
“The Iranian government’s only crime was not the missile attack. Allowing passenger planes to fly after the regime attacked the US, hiding the truth, not apologizing, and forcing families to follow their ceremony proceedings (for funerals) are all unforgivable crimes,” he wrote.
“Hoping for the day when we have an accountable government in Iran that values the lives of people,” Javad Soleimani wrote.
He said he would also shed light on how the Martyrs Bonyad, the IRGC and various security institutions put pressure on some families of the plane shootdown victims to take over their funeral proceedings and turn it into pro-regime ceremonies.
Reports and videos from Iran indicate that the regime forced many families to hold government organized funerals to prevent anti-government protests and to show that the families did not blame the regime for the death of their loved ones. These families were also threatened and forced to participate in interviews and regime organized press conferences.
Source » irannewswire