with the government saying she had a heart condition and suffered a heart attack and regime opponents saying she was beaten at the funeral.
Mourners were reportedly arrested at both her father’s funeral last Wednesday as well as at her memorial service Saturday.
Quite surprisingly, the US government has taken up the case and is 
demanding a full investigation of the death. The State Department has been loath to get involved in individual cases of alleged repression in Iran, so its response to the funeral death was notable.
Ezzatollah Sahabi’s daughter, Haleh, was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for participating in the post-election demonstrations in 2009. She had been temporarily released so she could attend her father’s funeral.
Ezzatollah Sahabi died May 28 after a month-long coma caused by a stroke on April 30. He had been a major figure in the opposition to the Shah and then to the Islamic Republic for six decades.
The cause of the death of his daughter is contentious. Opposition sources say she died from violent manhandling by the Iranian security forces, while state news agencies insist she died of natural causes. The best explanation appears to be a mix of the two.
Kaleme, an opposition website, reported, “Security forces tried to interfere in the carrying of the casket. [Haleh Sahabi] objected and security forces confronted her and other people present.” Eyewitnesses told the website that as security forces pushed and shoved and tried to pry away a picture of her father that Sahabi was holding, “she fell and did not get up.” Sahamnews said she had been punched by the security forces.
Ahmad Montazeri, son of the late dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossain-Ali Montazeri, confirmed that report, saying that after the security agent “hit her firmly with his elbow and caused her to collapse on the ground, they immediately transferred her to hospital accompanied by a doctor, but unfortunately she passed away there.”
Montazeri, who said he had been standing only a few meters from Sahabi, added, “One of the clear points during today’s ceremony was the presence of non-uniformed security forces who were very offensive, vulgar and aggressive. They were violent, and beat up and insulted people even more than at previous events. They had absolutely no respect for the mourning families or those present.” They were laughing and yelling scornfully during the service, he told the opposition website Jaras.
State media contradicted those accounts. The Mehr news agency was one of the few state-approved news agencies to even say there were clashes. The Fars news agency reported that its reporters at the funeral did not see any scuffling and the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) said flatly that nothing happened.
ISNA quoted security official Alireza Janeh as saying, “The Sahabi family had good cooperation with us. We also assisted the family with the burial.… The reason for Ms. Haleh Sahabi’s death was not a scuffle with the security forces, but because she had already been suffering from a heart condition.… The death of her father and the hot weather were additional reasons which led to her demise.” Janeh said Sahabi’s medical record was available for inspection.
Several media outlets from both sides have said Haleh Sahabi’s son, Yahya Shamekhi, and her uncle have acknowledged Sahabi’s death was due to heart failure. During an interview with one of the paramedics who treated Sahabi, a correspondent for state-run TV Channel Two reported that Shamekhi had been quoted as saying, “My mother fainted on seeing my grand-father’s dead body and she was taken to a clinic and she passed away. But the paramedics are of the opinion that the cardiac arrest led to her death immediately.”
The opposition Kaleme gave a slightly different cast to that, saying Shamekhi said his mother protested that security forces wanted to take her father’s body and then died “because of a cardiac arrest.”
Haleh’s paternal uncle, Ferydoon Sahabi, was quoted as confirming the reported heart failure in an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the state news agency, saying he had been previously “misquoted [by other media] as saying Haleh died from shock.”
The US State Department did not believe the official accounts and is demanding further examination of Sahabi’s death. “Both Haleh and her father suffered in life for their political activism, including imprisonment,” said US State Department spokesman Mark Toner. “We call on the Iranian government to investigate the circumstances of her death. If reports are accurate that government security forces contributed to her death, this would demonstrate a deplorable disregard for human dignity and respect on the part of the Iranian authorities.
“It is unfathomable that a government would be so terrified of its citizens that it would order the use of force against a daughter mourning at her father’s funeral,” Toner said.
It isn’t known if this intervention represents a new policy by the State Department, which has indicated it will begin putting more emphasis on human rights issues in Iran.
The authorities reportedly arrested a handful of people at Ezzatollah’s funeral June 1 and several more at Haleh’s memorial on Saturday.
IRNA reported that five people were detained June 1. Radio Farda quoted activist Morteza Kazemian as saying those arrested included: political activist Hamid Ahrari; grandson of the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri Hamed Montazeri; and member of the Freedom Movement of Iran Habibollah Peyman.
On Saturday, witnesses told Agence France Presse (AFP), about 15 people were arrested. They said security forces fired bullets into the air and used batons to disperse protestors gathered in silent groups outside the Hossainiyeh Ershad in northern Tehran. Several opposition websites and Facebook users had been calling for the protests at the mosque, reported AFP.
Some suggest that Sahabi’s death so close to the anniversary of the disputed 2009 presidential election may boost support for “silent rallies” scheduled for that day, June 12.
