Dr. Farshid Hakki, who was running for a seat on Tehran City Council, was murdered by unknown assailants at some point between October 17, when he was last seen, and October 20, when his family was informed of his death and told by the Regime not to speak to the press.
His friend and colleague Abdolreza Davari, the manager of Economic Studies magazine, which Hakki used to contribute to, has been publicising the murder via Twitter.
He wrote: “Dr. Farshid Hakki was attacked near his home and after being stabbed a number of times, his body was burned.”
He started after state-run media outlets began describing the death as a suicide, due to Hakki’s supposed financial difficulty, and denying that any crime had taken place. The state-run media quoted the Medical Examiner’s Office in their reports, before retracting any confirmation by the Medical Examiner’s Office in later reports.
State-run outlet ILNA wrote: “After reports were published on comments made by the Medical Examiner’s Office regarding the burnt body of a man in a vehicle which belonged to a person identified as Farshid Hakki, the Medical Examiner’s Office announced that it has not commented on this case. Any conclusion or findings on the reason behind the death will be announced to the judge presiding on the case.”
Tehran’s Chief of Police Hossein Rahimi is sticking with the suicide story, however, and has threatened those who say that Hakki was murdered, claiming that they are “instigating public opinion”.
While the details on Hakki’s obvious murder are still not clear, many Iranians are putting that blame on the Regime, who has a long history of killing dissidents. This is perhaps most clear in the Chain Murders of Iran, which occurred between 1988 and 1998, and saw 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens killed after criticising the Iranian Regime. Their deaths remain shrouded in secrecy.
Hakki was also an environmentalist, concerned with protecting the Zagros Mountain and a human rights advocate, writing the books “Human Rights for All”, and “The Political Economy of Human Rights”.
In his capacity as a lawyer, he defended child labourers, the homeless, and political prisoners, while his name was also featured on letters of support for political prisoners, like Abdolfateh Soltani and Ramin Hossein Panahi.
