IranWire has obtained shocking information regarding the death of Bijan Habibi, a 26-year-old man who lost his life in Zanjan on January 29, but whose cause of death was officially labeled by the regime as “suicide.” According to two informed sources, a few days before his death, Bijan told a friend abroad that he had been dispatched by his employer to recover CCTV footage from Zanjan’s Sabzeh Meydan area, the main hub of the protests, where surveillance cameras had been vandalized. While working on the assignment, he managed to view scenes of the killing of protesters during the demonstrations on January 8 and 9. He was able to see the faces of two individuals firing at the crowd and told his friend that they were “soldiers.” Bijan also mentioned seeing a sniper whose face was obscured but noted that the faces of the protesters were completely identifiable. Consequently, he informed his workplace that the footage was unrecoverable and destroyed it instead.
On his forensic medical certificate, the cause of death is recorded as “falling from a height” and “impact of a blunt object to the head.” His mother, who arrived home shortly after the incident, remarked that his body lay on the ground exactly like “Nika Shakarami,” a reference to the images published by the Islamic Republic’s media after the killing of 16-year-old Nika during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, where authorities claimed she had ended her own life.
