A friend of Nader Mokhtari, a young protester who was arrested during the November 2019 countrywide protests in Iran and died in prison on Septmeber 19,  referred to the Judiciary’s comments about Mokhtari being a crimianl as “shameless lies”, made to evade responsibility for his “torture and murder”.

Speaking to the opposition Kalameh website the family friend said if the Judiciary is denying Mokhtari died of injuries received while in custody, then why was his in hospital with severe head injuries and in coma.

He added: “Nader had ordinary asthma, does asthma cause fractured skull and broken arm and coma and death?”

Comments made by this source are in response to the claims made a few days ago by the President of Prisons Organization of Tehran province, Heshmatollah Hayatolgheib, who denied all the reports about Nader Mokhtari and said he died of shortness of breath

The judiciary official said Nader was sentenced to eight years in prison for “robbery” since 2015.

The source close to the Mokhtari’s family said between 2015 to 2019 Nader did not spend a single day in prison.

According to the same report, Nader Mokhtari’s family were unaware of his condition since November 15, 2019, and they finally found their son’s body half-dead in a coma in a hospital 20 days later.

The source close to the family said Nader was then taken from hospital to prison “without any notice,” to the family where he was “killed under torture from blows by batons on September 19, 2020.”

He went on to say that Nader Mokhtari was “tortured in the worst possible way: His head was swollen, all his teeth were broken, his arm was broken but they hadn’t used a cast so it had healed in a crooked manner.”

According to Kalameh website, Mokhtari’s family were forced into silence by the security forces.

It is yet unclear where he was held. Some have reported that he was held in the notorious Kahrizak jail, but the judiciary claims he was held in Fashashuyeh prison since 2015.

The source close to the family strongly denied Nader Mokhtari’s imprisonment in 2015, but said he was being held in Fashashuyeh prison in 2019.

He explained: On the day that they contacted the family, they told them to come to Kahrizak jail to receive the corpse of their son, so the family thought he was being held in Kahrizak. But from what we have found out, he was being held in the Greater Tehran prison (Fashashuyeh).