Hours after a video went viral showing “Navid Ziadkhan Qaradaghi” screaming at several women and brutally beating a young woman inside a home during an Instagram Live broadcast, Iranian domestic news agencies reported his arrest.
The news outlet Rokna published a video showing Colonel Saeed Rasti, a senior official in the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FARAJA), standing over a hospital bed. Lying on the bed was Navid Ziadkhan, incapacitated by gunshot wounds to both legs and with his right arm heavily bandaged. Throughout the video, Colonel Rasti repeatedly stresses to reporters that the injured arm is attached to the very hand the suspect used to strike the young woman. Police claimed that, during his arrest, Ziadkhan resisted officers from the Greater Tehran Police Intelligence Division using a “cold weapon” - a blade or blunt-force instrument.
The live broadcast video was viewed tens of thousands of times across social media platforms, leading to his rapid identification. In it, the perpetrator repeatedly used graphic, misogynistic slurs against the women under his control and hurled obscenities at the police force itself.
Numerous women who have experienced domestic violence in Iran report a history of severe police neglect, even after making repeated emergency calls. Previous investigations by IranWire into femicides show that the majority of victims had lodged formal judicial complaints against their eventual killers regarding prior domestic abuse, only for their cases to be dismissed or ignored. Why, then, did the police act with such unprecedented speed and lethal force in the case of Navid Ziadkhan Qaradaghi?
