A Nurse From Iran Breaks Silence on Abuse of Believers

The notoriety of the oppression enacted by the tyrannical regime in Iran since the inception of the so-called Islamic Republic is well-founded and widely documented. The methods of coercion and intimidation employed by the government through its various forces, crowned especially by the infamous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), include all forms of torture, whether physical or psychological, and topped with execution. Any political opposition is met with an iron fist and this extends to anything that is deemed a threat by the religious authority headed by the supreme leader, who leads the country, giving himself the title of “Ayatollah Al-Udhma,” meaning the Grand Sign of Allah before taking this position of leadership.

The incidents suffered by the believers in the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light of Iranian heritage within the country and abroad have been recorded extensively over the years and continue to be reported on. These crimes against humanity must be answered to, and the perpetrators should never be allowed to escape accountability for the roles they played in enacting such heinous acts.

The Divine Just State magazine sat with Zahra Shekariyan Asl, a qualified and published nurse from Iran, to get details of her experiences and struggles, including the recent disappearance of her brother, Mohammadreza Shekariyan Asl, who has not been missing since the 23rd of September.

Peace, mercy and blessings of Allah be upon you, dear Zahra. Many Ansar around the world have heard about you because of the heartbreaking painting that you made, which depicts the head of Imam Al-Hussein on the spear in the hand of the cursed Shimr ibn Dhil Jawshan. We want to highlight your journey to the Qaim. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

And peace, mercy and blessings of Allah be upon you.  I am the youngest of three siblings in a Twelver Shia family from Tehran. My sister is a single mother, graphics graduate, and tailor. My brother Mohammadreza, a devoted believer and a filmmaking graduate, and back then was a filmmaker, actor, and camera assistant. I am a nurse with a published study in PubMed, I was a co-author for it. I was practicing my religion properly from A-Z according to what Twelver Shias believe, from praying to fasting, to wearing a proper hijab, to believing in all that comes with the faith. The only thing was that my family, who are religious, and I were not really followers of the regime in Iran. We believed that Imam Mohammed Al-Mahdi is in occultation, yet we were questioning Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Jurisprudent): how can scholars claim contact with him when their actions and treatment of people don't reflect the Ahlul-Bayt at all?

At age six, I lost my dad, Mohammad Hassan. He crashed his motorcycle in an unmarked massive pothole at night; another rider collided, causing my father fatal brain injuries. The ambulance took 45 minutes to arrive at the scene, which was too late. His body laid neglected on the street. The well-connected other rider (family in the judiciary) faced no jail; the court first blamed my dad 100%. My mother fought again after a guiding dream, winning 50/50 fault and being awarded diya (blood money) from the other rider. We grew up orphaned; my mother cleaned houses to survive, and spent weekends at his grave. One preventable failure took him; the system's failures took our childhood.

Mohammadreza (Left) with his sister Zahra (Right)

So how did you get to know about this call?

I was always looking for the truth, where to find it and with whom it is. From the age of nine years, I wore Hijab, prayed and fasted. At school, they told us that we had to choose a Marja Al-Taqlid (imitation of scholars), a Grand Ayatollah who acts as a "source of emulation";  a religious authority whose rulings on Islamic law (Sharia) we must follow, if we ourselves are not capable of independent legal reasoning (ijtihad). There were dozens of them to choose from, and the rule was clear: we should select the most learned and righteous among them. I remember feeling overwhelmed with sadness and doubt. How was a child like me supposed to know which one was truly the best, the one with the fewest flaws? How could I possibly trust any of them? Who had granted them this authority? Who had truly recognized them as righteous? What makes a person more qualified than the other? 

So I prayed to Imam Mahdi, the Imam of the Time, and begged him to make me understand why he himself is not coming out; and why we had to follow and emulate these people whom we know nothing about.

My brother, Mohammadreza, became very involved with local mosques during his teenage years. He even joined the Basij (an Iranian paramilitary militia) for a while. However, when he realised that they were hypocritical and full of corruption, he left the Basij and stopped caring about religion altogether, including the obligatory acts. He was deeply disappointed by the behaviour of the so-called guardians of God’s religion.

He then entered the field of cinema after studying filmmaking at the University of Applied Science and Technology (UAST), Culture and Arts faculty, in Tehran. After graduating he made a few short films and also acted in some TV productions and short movies. One of the short films he appeared in even won a prize at international festivals. He also worked behind the scenes as an assistant and performed in theatre. He was considered good-looking, talented, hardworking, and trustworthy. He cared about humanity, but he also believed that there was no longer any humanity in religion.

Unfortunately, the cinema industry in Iran is also full of corruption. The more money you have and the better your connections, the more successful you become in your career. This is true for most fields; in fact, I would say all of them. As a result, he became depressed and stopped working with any institution or organisation. At one point, he became so desperate that he even considered suicide. However, he asked himself: what if there is a God and an afterlife? What if the Imam of the time is out there somewhere?

So he began to search. He believed there must be a sign of him. He reasoned that if there are false claimants to being the Imam of the time, then there must also be a true one. But where was he, and why was he silent?

Suddenly, he came across a sermon of Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan online in late 2017. As soon as he heard his voice, he believed he was truthful. He saw him as a brave man who stood against the Hawza and the scholars, and this astonished my brother. He noticed that the people who were talking about Ahmed Al-Hassan were referred to as the Black Banners of the East. As soon as he heard the name Abdullah Hashem, he said, “That’s it.” He had already watched The Arrivals before; he had actually shown it to me at the time, we were both fascinated by it back then and we began to question everything. How could it be that everything we once believed was good was actually bad and a part of Freemasonry? A country that is considered the center of Shiism seemed to be full of Masonic symbols. The logos of our TV channels appeared to display the “one eye.” The Islamic council building resembled a pyramid.

The most shocking thing I heard was a narration claiming that any Islamic state before the Mahdi’s emergence is false, and that the Mahdi’s top enemies are the scholars. We were amazed that the person who presented and spread these ideas was himself a Muslim. We became very eager to learn more: Who is Abdullah Hashem? How had we never heard these narrations before? It felt as though there must be some kind of hidden truth or conspiracy.

Eventually, my brother found Abdullah Hashem, the creator of The Arrivals and TADs. He contacted the Ansar of Imam Mahdi through Paltalk and said that he wanted to pledge allegiance. This was around the end of February 2018. After that, he began speaking to us about the Yamani and informing us about Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan.

He referred to him as an Imam. For us, there were only twelve Imams - how could there be another one? In Iran, they have done something similar with Khomeini and Khamenei, calling them “Imam.” I always found it disturbing to hear people sending loud salawat after hearing Khamenei’s name, yet saying nothing after hearing the name of Imam Mahdi. So, it felt like a sin even to consider adding someone to the line of succession of the Ahlul-Bayt.

He explained that the lineage did not stop with the Twelfth Imam and that there are actually twelve Mahdis after him, according to the Will of Prophet Mohammed. Then he showed me The Black Banners of the East channel, and we spent a lot of time going through the videos and books in detail. He told me that we do not need to rely on scholars, but should instead research for ourselves.

The situation in Iran is not hopeful; on the contrary, people are very depressed and their standard of living is low. Bombings occur, buildings collapse, airplanes crash, and many other tragic events happen within the country. I was successful in my education and career, but deep down I knew that something was missing, and I felt depressed. I was working as a nursing student in hospitals, and I witnessed how badly patients were treated. Poor people would come from far away to Tehran, to the so-called Imam Khomeini Hospital, where I worked at the time, hoping to find a cure for their sick children. Unfortunately, many of them found no treatment. They had to spend months living in tents around the hospital, even sleeping on the streets, just to receive care for their innocent children. I began to feel that the medical system was not treating people, but rather helping them die faster. There was an infamous case of a nurse who removed the stitches from a child’s head shortly after they had been applied because the family did not have enough money to pay. The doctor had instructed the nurse to remove the stitches immediately.

The head of our university used to tell us that her father‑in‑law had gone blind in one of the well‑known hospitals in Tehran because a doctor was trying out a new medication, he was using patients as test cases in his trials without their consent or them being aware. I personally withdrew from receiving any medication because of the cruelty and dishonesty I witnessed in the system.

After COVID-19, I started to believe that it was a punishment for the healthcare system because of its cruelty - treating sick people as a business and a source of money rather than as human beings. I witnessed these things with my own eyes. I became deeply regretful for becoming a nurse and I wanted to quit. As a side note, before we continue the journey, I would also like to mention that the “Medicine of the Mahdis” was, for me, one of the strongest proofs of the truthfulness of Aba Al-Sadiq. Thank God, the cure has been placed in nature itself, not in the hands of the tyrants. So all of this led me to question the purpose of life - what is the point of studying, working, getting married, and living at all? I noticed how alive my brother felt from within, so I asked him to help me find the purpose of my own life.

He told me to listen to the voice of Ahmed Al-Hassan, particularly his sermon about meeting the Twelfth Imam. What he was saying was very different from anything I had heard before. He also spoke about the corruption within the Hawzas and how the original message of Prophet Mhoammed had been distorted. The sayings of the Imams began to make sense to me, especially when I looked around at what was happening in Iran.

I began watching the initial videos produced by the Black Banners of the East channel. The knowledge about Raj’a (reincarnation) fascinated me - knowledge that was already present in Shia books but that we had never heard before. Everything made sense. Suddenly, Islam transformed from being a dead religion into something vibrant and alive.

My brother told me that if I wanted to know the truth about this Dawah (Call), I should ask God directly for a sign. I did, and shortly after, I received one. I performed two rakat and opened the Qur’an. I asked God, “Is this religion truly upon the truth?” The verse that came to me shocked me. I had read the Qur’an hundreds of times in my life, but that was the first time in my life I felt as if the verse was speaking directly to me. It was verse 24 from Surah Al-Anfal:

"O believers! Respond to Allah and His Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that Allah stands between a person and their heart, and that to Him you will all be gathered."

I was astonished. The only person I knew who called people with this message of awakening was Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan, who said, “Wake up, O sleepers; wake up, O dead.” I realized then that he was the one bringing life to me, and that I should respond to him and believe in him.

I came to believe, and we sent a video of our pledge of allegiance to Aba Al-Sadiq. We began watching the satellite channel and started contributing through activities such as translation work and dubbing documentaries to make materials accessible for Persian-speaking people both inside and outside of Iran.

Thank you very much Zahra, let us get back to you and your brother's story of being a believer in Iran.

We were over the moon with joy, but my family did not understand us at first. My mother, who initially was not a believer, saw the profound change in my brother’s morals, manners and character. Witnessing the man he had become, she realized that this religion must be true, and she pledged allegiance as well. My nephew, still a child of eight years old at the time, also sensed the truthfulness of this call and became a believer - but not his parents.

We began to spread the call. My brother, especially, seized every opportunity to share the message of Imam Mahdi with strangers, relatives and friends. He carried this message to many people, and some of them remain devoted to it. For example, Mansour - who my brother met during exile - heard about Imam Mahdi from him and came to believe. After we started to spread the call, our family and relatives began speaking badly about us. They mocked us, especially my brother. According to them, he had turned from a good, respectable man into a “crazy person” in need of mental care.

Initially, we were a group of five or six on WhatsApp, and our bishop was brother Hamidreza. He used to share the teachings of Aba Al-Sadiq with us and served as our connection to him. Over time, our group grew, and we began meeting in person. We gathered at our house, coming from different cities. Those were moments I will never forget - we met our true family, our soul family.

You were becoming successful in spreading the call. How did you attract the attention of the authorities?

We had a telegram group where we were active in spreading the call. A couple of people entered and one of them was a woman my brother was supposed to marry by the name of Ruqayah. She came from an Iraqi family and her father was one the guardians of one of the biggest Husseiniyas (shia place of worship) in Teheran. She gathered some people that proclaimed faith. She herself wrote books promoting Ahmed Al-Hassan, Aba Al-Sadiq and the Dawah. As soon as Ruqayah heard that we were ready to make Hijrah (migrate), we later found out that she had informed the officials of the clerics, including the local police, about it, and as a result, they stormed our house in February 2020. They abducted my brother and we had no idea where he was until, eventually, he called us and informed us that they had locked him up in the notorious Evin prison of Tehran. Six or seven agents came to our home at 6:00 AM and took him away, claiming that he had committed murder, without providing any further explanation. They also searched our house. My nephew, who was ten years old at the time, was quivering with fear. He was crying and asking them where they were taking his uncle. They even took the building’s CCTV footage to erase any record of themselves.

The family applied a lot of pressure on us and expressed their anger because they felt as if we had put them in danger by believing in “this nonsense”. My brother told us later that officials had gathered information about this call in detail, especially about the Persian-speaking Ansar who were in charge over the activities of spreading the call, and particularly about Hamidreza Saghari, who is the responsible bishop of Iran for the Religion. Their source of information were Ruqayah  and these so-called believers that she had brought, they had been spying on us.

Please let us pause here for a minute, and give the reader a little more of an insight into what it is like to grow up in Iran from a religious point of view. If you had to describe your impression of your surroundings, what is it that an Iranian is faced with?

If you grew up in Iran, you're familiar with the phrase: "Allahu Akbar, janam faday-e rahbar" (which translates to English as "God is greater; I sacrifice my life for the Leader”). But the real question that haunted me was: which leader truly deserves such sacrifice? As a child, I knew only one leader - the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei. That was it. As I grew older, these questions never left my mind. I had always imagined a true leader in the image of Imam Ali. Many people believe Khamenei resembles Imam Ali, even pointing to the shared name "Ali" as a sign. But I remembered the saying of the Prophet of Islam that in the end times, nothing will remain of Islam except its name, and nothing of the Qur’an except its script. I came to feel that this applied perfectly to him: he is "Ali" only on paper. I could never see his words or actions aligning with those of the Prince of the Believers, Ali ibn Abi Talib.

At school, they taught us that Khomeini was like the Prophet Mohammed and Khamenei was like Imam Ali. They warned that if we didn’t accept the wilayah (guardianship) of Ali Khamenei, we would burn in hellfire. If we didn’t vote in elections, we’d go to hell too, because by not choosing “the righteous leader,” we’d let evil prevail. They said if a woman didn’t wear a hijab, God would hang her by her hair in hell. If we listened to music or danced, we would be turned into monkeys.

Imagine a child’s mind - like a sponge - absorbing all this fear and nonsense as truth. What kind of God could that child possibly expect, except one who is harsh, punitive, and always waiting to torment rather than guide with mercy? Imagine a country with around 80,000 mosques, hundreds of hawzas, and nearly 9,000 holy shrines and mausoleums - these are not even exact numbers. In a land so saturated with the outward symbols of faith, practicing true Islam should be effortless. It should be the most fertile ground on earth for Imam Mahdi to establish his Divine Just State. The people living there should be the most blessed and fortunate on the planet. Yet the painful reality is the exact opposite. 

My own aunt was also a victim of this regime. She was imprisoned, forced to divorce her domineering husband (who worked for the IRGC and was involved in various illegal activities) while still behind bars. She was denied permission to see her four young children or even to breastfeed her newborn baby. This is not an isolated story, but an example of the harsh realities I've witnessed among my own family and close friends.

For example, I know a woman who, driven by extreme poverty, had to sell her newborn baby. I know another woman who was murdered, along with her young son, by her drug-addicted husband. I also know a woman who turned to selling her body just to survive. Another woman I know, had to live in hiding with her children because her husband, deep in debt, became a fugitive. I know children who were forced to work on the streets until midnight to provide for their families. I knew young people who ended their own lives due to crushing depression, joblessness, or being banned from traveling abroad. My own family member attempted suicide multiple times.

In those dark times, we still had a home, and my mother, along with my brother especially, would do everything possible to shelter and help these people. The version of Islam practiced in today’s Iran feels exactly identical to the Islam of Muawiya’s era. The same old tricks are being used: religion is wielded as a tool of power, justice is inverted, and the pulpit is exploited to silence truth. History is repeating itself. And tragically, figures who bear the likeness of Muawiya and Yazid in spirit have ended up as the supreme leaders of this land. I’ve come to believe that the truest way to know someone, or a system, is by their actions, not their words or symbols. 

Jesus said: "By their fruits you shall know them." 

Yes exactly, they name everything after the Ahlul-Bayt. We drive on the Imam Ali Highway, pass through Imam Hussein Square, turn at Fatemi Square and walk down Vali-e Asr Avenue. Beautiful names, holy names, everywhere you look, as if just saying those names is enough to make the land sacred. But when I look closer, it feels like we’ve stopped at the naming. The names are everywhere, but the spirit feels far away.

It breaks my heart every time I remember the streets with the names of the Imams in Tehran - seeing seven or eight-year-old girls selling flowers just to survive. I used to stop and talk to them, buy them food, bring them warm clothes... But how many could I truly help on my own? How many hungry men could I feed as they rummaged through trash bins for scraps?

One of those little girls even asked me innocently if the Imam of the Time is still alive and watching over us. Her question pierced me - how do you explain such suffering to a child who believes in divine justice, yet sees none around her?

Iran has around 90 million people, and the majority live below the poverty line. It still brings tears to my eyes; the innocence stolen, the dignity crushed. No child should have to beg or sell on the streets to eat. No one should dive into garbage for food. This level of widespread despair is heartbreaking beyond words.

It’s a truly disturbing reality. You mentioned the hijab being obligatory earlier according to what you were taught in school, how did you feel when you learned that it was never an obligation from God?

I remember coming home from university when my brother excitedly told me, “Guess what? The hijab is not an obligation in Islam.” I immediately recorded a testimony video for Aba Al-Sadiq, saying that I had heard and would obey, though I never managed to send it. For safety reasons, we were told that we could not remove it while in Iran, because these murderers would not have allowed us to live. The whole world knows the story of Mahsa Amini and others like her. So I patiently continued wearing it. Unfortunately, in Iran, most followers of Khamenei wear the hijab fully. I wore it only because I thought God required it, but when I learned that it was not from God, I was more than happy to remove it.

The first time I truly experienced life without the hijab was when I went to the UAE. It was July, the hottest month of the year, but for me it felt like the coolest month, as I could feel the breeze in my hair after wearing the hijab for 20 years. I felt so blessed. The same joy came when I learned that the Kaaba is not in Mecca, but in Petra. We were overjoyed to know that we could pray towards the true House of God, not the Saudi version. We actually began directing our prayers toward Petra, though we were later advised not to since we could have been arrested.

What did all of this result in, what was your reaction to it?

There were groups of Ansar in Iran that we were in contact with, who we were socialising with and gathering with on special occasions, like on Aba Al-Sadiq's birthday, the 27th of July; or on the anniversary of the death of King Abdullah of Hijaz, the 23rd of January. All of our activities, which were either face-to-face or on social media, had to be cancelled to ensure our survival and we practiced our belief in hiding. We were practicing taqiyah (dissimulation). We were forced to cut off all our contact with any Ansar and delete anything related to the religion that we had, whether in electronic files or printed form.

Next to my brother, they had locked up a couple of other people too. My brother had to deny the religion and my mother had to pay bail for my brother to be released. Even then they sent him to an exile area where he could not leave the village that he stayed in. A village where the Iranian government would keep cases like my brother away from the daily affairs of the country, many people in that mountainous area were either guards or people that the government exiled. During this time, I made Hijrah, got married and reached the place that I am in now; a place of safety and freedom under the wing of Aba Al-Sadiq. I had to leave my brother behind, even though I did not want to; he started me on my journey and could not accompany me at this stage.

We are so happy for you that you are safe and that you are with us. I bet it was not difficult to leave Iran behind if the situation was as tense as you explained. The government seems to have a big issue with religion and generally with anyone who is promoting a different ideology to what the state of Iran promotes.

Basically, everything we practice goes against their interests and teachings and would cause their system to collapse. I used to hear mullahs (religious teachers) on the street say that they do not want Imam Mahdi to emerge, because it would mean they would have to hand over the country to him, along with all the money from Khums and Zakat. All those palaces and castles they had built out of gold for their scholars would be taken from them. They are the top enemies of the Mahdi. For all these years, they have been the only ones believed to represent a Mahdi’s state. They have called themselves the successors of Imam Mahdi and they publicly declare “May Allah hasten his reappearance”, implying that Imam Mahdi is in direct contact with them. This means that whatever they do and whatever they say is supposedly what Imam Mahdi commands.

Look at the hypocrisy of this regime. At the time when Aba Al-Sadiq produced The Arrivals, they interviewed him on national TV and acknowledged both him and his work. But as soon as he released The Arrived, in which he spoke about the emergence of Imam Mahdi and the Yamani, he was declared a heretic and his blood was made halal (permissible). These people had already decided who would be their Imam Mahdi and their Yamani.

However, through the teachings of Aba Al-Sadiq and Ahlul-Bayt, we know that history repeats itself. When we go back to the time of Prophet Mohammed, when he sent letters to the rulers of other nations, what did the king of Persia, Khosrow, do? He tore up the letter, ignored the message, and tried to conceal the truth from his people. The same thing is happening today. When Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan sent a letter to the former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, he ignored it and ordered his assassination. He commanded Iran's intelligence services, with the help of the Iraqis, to usurp the call of the Imam and to assassinate him; and to target his Ansar by any means possible, including infiltration of any groups, online or otherwise.

Today, they have done the same to the son and successor of Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan, Aba Al-Sadiq. They have infiltrated the community of the Ansar of the Imam, claiming to be believers, imprisoned them, tortured them, caused them to lose their families and children, and forced them to become refugees and strangers in foreign lands like Turkey. They did not stop there; they produced filthy, false documentaries against the Qaim of the Family of Mohammed and the Yamani of the Family of Mohammed. They even made cakes with images of the Imam's head, cut them on television, and ate them. How vile are their actions!

They continue this assault by broadcasting documentaries, sermons and publishing books specifically aimed at defaming and discrediting the call of the Mahdi Aba Al-Sadiq, portraying his followers as heretics, agents of foreign powers, or threats to the state, all while framing the movement as deviant to suppress the truth. They have forced false testimonies from prisoners to that aim. They have even issued fatwas against the Imam. This is well-known from the public statement of Khomeini, where he declared that "Preserving the Islamic Republic is more important than preserving any single individual, even if that individual is the Imam of the Time." Subhanallah (Glory be to God), we see in the narrations of the Ahlul-Bayt that the clear enemies of the Qaim are Arabs and Persians. This enmity is a fulfillment of prophecies from the Family of Mohammed.

So how did the story of your brother continue, what did he do after you had left Iran?

As I mentioned earlier, it seems that there was a conspiracy to have him imprisoned, and Ruqaya was instrumental to that aim. Her father, Abdulamir Fouladzadeh Karbalai, as one of the guardians of the Husseiniya in Tehran, Karbalaeeha Husaineeyais (Tehran), was very well connected to high ranking officials within the government and the religious authorities including the Special Clerical Courts (the records of which are not generally made public). It is usually this branch of the legal system which enacts rulings and actions against those deemed deviant or deserving of investigation. The Special Clerical Court had issued the verdict which put my brother in Evin prison. They also ruled that he remain in exile for twenty-four months. Hence, they had banned him from leaving the village he stayed in, he could not just get up and cross the border. Once his time in exile was over, the Ansar started to gather again, this time a bit more discreetly and carefully, out of fear of the officials in Iran. So they drafted up a plan to cross the border by foot, but to get close to the Turkish border, they had to rent a tourist bus and then finally get into four taxis that would transport them as close as possible to the border. Someone had reported the fifteen people to the officials, which led to a horrible raid by heavily armed men that fired gunshots to stop the taxis; they treated them like they deserved to die, for nothing more than believing in this religion, hence the crossing of the border did not happen. The police officers searched their belongings and kept them outside in cold weather. They beat up my brother very badly and they threw his body and head aggressively against the car and punched him in his face several times where one of his teeth fell out. They kept the fifteen of them in a detention centre for three days until they imprisoned all of them, including women and children, in the Evin prison. During interrogation, they tortured them. According to what the Ansar said, it was so scary how they treated them, that even other inmates got scared to the point that they told the Ansar to give in and work with the officials. Under the beating, they tried to force the Ansar to write signed confessions that stated that Abdullah Hashem had commanded them to commit adultery and homosexuality, which are considered heavy crimes by the state of Iran. One of the members was threatened with a razor on his tongue and they actually cut into it to make him talk because he tried to remain silent. Getting shouted at and beaten became routine to the Ansar. They found themselves in Solitary confinement, where they had no idea what happened to the others. The crying of one of the Ansari sisters had filled the hallways as she was threatened with raped by the prison guards where one of them turned around and said “I don’t find her attractive”.  Alireza Gol Mohammad’s wife was threatened with execution if she did not divorce him instantly, which she did. They stayed there for several months until they were finally released on bail until their trial date. Each time the Ansar were forced to pay bail, the sum was approximately $15,000. My brother’s bail, at this time, was equal to $118,259.

These are Horror stories that make the blood freeze in a man's veins and we can only imagine what other atrocities are happening in the dungeons of Iran.

It is horrible, Iran has no respect for human beings, it has nothing to do with the teachings of Ahlul-Bayt and can’t even be considered animalistic. No animal would do that to another animal. They are monsters. The evidence is available online. People can go and investigate the crimes and killings carried out by the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day they came to power until now. I do not have to prove anything. There are countless voices out there who have suffered under this regime. This is all public knowledge. The stories which are kept secret are much, much worse.

They have said on their own TV channels that they are systematically producing lies. They themselves have made these claims. And they announced that anyone who is not happy with them should leave the country. But the question is: how? No one grants us asylum, and they do not even issue us passports. I had to leave my country without saying goodbye to my family. I left out of fear that someone would stop me or ban me from travelling.

Absolutely.

When my brother was imprisoned for the second time in Iran, he shared a cell with a man named Santiago Sánchez, a Spanish tourist. Santiago had been mistakenly arrested by Iranian intelligence during the Mahsa Amini protests and held in Evin Prison for a full year. He hadn’t even been able to inform anyone that he was imprisoned in Iran. In his own words, he had reached such despair that he no longer wanted to carry on living; that is, until he met my brother, whom he described as an angel who gave him hope. With my brother’s help by contacting our mother, Santiago was able to get word to the Spanish embassy about his situation, which paved the way for his release. Santiago never forgot my brother. He even went on to write a book detailing his 15 months behind bars in Iran -  titled “Cómo Sobreviví 15 Meses Entre Rejas” ("How I Survived 15 Months Behind Bars"). In it, he spoke about my brother, describing him as an angel, the person who gave him hope and literally helped save his life during that dark time. Wow, Maybe we can highlight that Topic at a different point in time, but let us continue with what had actually happened to your brother.

They did not want to wait for the trial to come up. My brother and one of the believers successfully crossed the border, where they were caught again, but this time by the Turkish officials. They spent a whole year in prison in Turkey, where they were treated badly too, but it was not comparable with the cruel torture that they had endured in Evin prison. The reason for their imprisonment was illegally crossing the border without having a passport or papers. After being held in a detention center in Turkey for a full year, my brother began working as a dishwasher in a small restaurant.

Mohammadreza working in a restaurant

Later, he spent several months as a construction labourer, helping to complete unfinished buildings. With living costs so high and wages so low, he was forced to sleep inside those very same half-built structures; he didn’t even have anywhere to bathe. He would send me videos showing the place he was staying and the sites where he worked. His sole hope was to gather enough money for the trip so he could make his way toward the Qaim and continue his Hijra. Every bit of pay he received would be split: some went toward his immediate necessities, and the remainder he carefully set aside as savings.

Mohammadreza working in a construction

He got in touch, through a friend, with someone familiar inside the Iranian embassy, thinking this would finally allow him to renew his expired passport. Since he had escaped from Iran without permission, that contact in the embassy extorted a huge amount of money from him, promising to handle everything smoothly and without issues. In the end, though, the man took the cash and vanished, leaving my brother stranded without a passport.

The officials in Iran are still contacting my mother and asking about him, sending letters to the house to summon him to court. They even stopped my mother on the border to Turkey, saying that she wants to go to see her son. They interrogated her, before they let her go.

Mohammedreza kissing his mother farewell in Turkey

Mohammedreza kissing his mother farewell in Turkey

When I speak to her on the phone, she is even scared to say my brother’s name or Aba Al Sadiq’s name, she speaks about them using nicknames that we agreed upon. That’s the extent of fear that my mother has when it comes to the Dawah inside Iran. My brother did not really feel safe in Turkey either. The Turkish government would deport refugees from all the neighbouring countries on regular basis, my brother was living in fear from the government of Iran which would very likely execute him this time if they would get a hold of him. So he tried to get out of Turkey by any means.

Sibling of Zahra and Mohammadreza (Left), Zahra (Middle), Mohammadreza (Right)

Mohammadreza suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, and every so often, his knee would swell up painfully; he had to have the fluid drained from it. This photo is from 2017, back when I was a nursing student working at Loqman Hospital in Tehran. My brother was admitted to the men's internal medicine ward at the time. 

The harsh conditions of his imprisonment, combined with two full years of internal exile in one of Iran's coldest cities, severely aggravated his already fragile health. The extreme cold, poor living conditions, and lack of proper medical care took a heavy toll on his rheumatoid arthritis and overall well-being.

Before being exiled, he was detained for a month in one of the worst camps in Iran, located in the village of Mehraban in East Azerbaijan Province. He was eventually released after paying money. During his time in the camp, he was humiliated, and his hair and beard were completely shaved off.

Mohammadreza living in exile

We know that your brother disappeared around six months ago. How did that happen?

Knowing about his difficult circumstances in Turkey, Santiago offered to help Mohammadreza if he could find any way to reach Greece. After some research and inquiries, my brother discovered a route to leave Turkey. The only thing he told me was that he was heading to Greece — but he didn’t explain how or by what means. The last time I spoke with him was on the 23rd of September, 2025.

Last photo of Mohammadreza before setting off on his journey

He promised he would contact me again, but I never heard from him. He went offline after that and has remained unreachable ever since. After about a week, a man contacted us, saying he had been a companion of Mohammadreza's on the journey. He claimed they had gotten separated, and that he had lost Mohammadreza in the Evros River, the last known spot where he was seen was in that very river, right along the Turkey-Greece border. Only God knows what fate befell him. We tried to hire lawyers in both Turkey and Greece to search for him, but they found no trace. A few weeks later, the Turkish lawyer called and said a body had been recovered from the river. They needed a family member to go there and provide a DNA sample because the body was unrecognizable. I had no choice but to break this news to my mother and ask her to travel to Turkey. Deep down, I clung to the hope that it wasn’t my brother’s body. I kept thinking of his smile, his innocent eyes full of kindness, and I couldn’t hold back my tears. Yet I had to stay strong in front of my mother and show her that we had to be resilient.

I wanted to share this news with Father Aba Al-Sadiq and ask for his prayers. In the basilica of Aba al-Sadiq, there is a Qur’an placed on the table next to his chair. Without hesitation, I picked it up and asked God to speak to me through it. The verses that opened were about Prophet Moses asking God to send his brother Aaron with him, and God accepted. I understood it as a sign that God intended to return my brother to me. And praise be to God, thanks to the prayers of Father Aba Al-Sadiq, before my mother even gave the DNA sample, they determined that the body was not my brother’s.

If it weren’t for Aba Al-Sadiq, I’m certain I wouldn’t have been able to stay strong. He taught me to always think well of God. He told me that my brother is a warrior and a soldier [of faith], and that God never forgets His friends.

These days, all that's physically left of my brother are two simple things: his phone number, which I dial over and over, clinging to the faint chance that one day someone will pick up and give me news; and the hat he once gave to one of the Ansar in Turkey, a kind person who later brought it to me as a keepsake. I hold onto these remnants tightly because they are the last tangible pieces of him I have.

During their time in the Turkish detention center, my brother shared a special moment with one of the Ansar: together, they sketched out a makeshift British ID card by hand. It was a small act of imagination and defiance, a symbol of their shared hope that someday they might make it to the UK and find their way to the Qaim. They clung to that dream amid the uncertainty and hardship.

Sketched out British ID cards along with a piece of the shirt of Aba Al-Sadiq

In the photo, what you're looking at is a fragment of the shirt from Yusef of Ale Mohammed (Joseph of the Family of Mohammed), which he sent to the believers in Turkey. They carefully divided it into small pieces, each one treasuring their share as a sacred reminder. Their deepest hope was to one day stand before him face-to-face, and when that day comes, every suffering, every trial of their long migration, would simply fade away in the joy of reunion.

This is only a small glimpse into my brother’s story. He never burdened me with the full details of his hardships. Instead, he simply taught me that we have a true leader, a father, and a shepherd who would never forget even one of his flock or his children. And indeed, he has never forgotten any of his Ansar, not even for a single moment. That is why he is now making our stories known to the world. He has given us a voice—a voice I could never have used freely in my own country.

We are deeply disturbed about the disappearance of your brother and wish that he will appear sooner rather than later. Is there anything else you want to add and say to the people?

The people really need to understand that Iran is a criminal country with a demonic government that has nothing to do with Ahlul-Bayt, they are deceptive, cruel and full of hypocrisy in every sense. Our blessed call sup the belief of “Humanity first”, meaning that you have to be a human being in the first place before being a believer in any religion. Our people did no harm to anybody, but they were oppressed wherever they turned; and in the first place, they believe in the Will of the Prophet Mohammed, which shows clearly that Iran is out to hunt our people down for a belief that should actually be upheld by anyone that believes in Islam. The reality is far from that. All my brother wanted was to practice his religion and that seemed to be a worse crime than anything else for the inhumane Republic of Iran. I am very happy that I am with the Qaim and that I am safe. I am able to share my art in the service of this religion. But I am deeply sad about what happened to my brother and all the other Ansar, may they all be released one day from this prison that the Mullahs had built. 

Thank you very much Zahra for sharing all of this with us. We hope that we hear from your brother soon and that your wish for the Iranian people comes true.

Thank you. The news of Khamenei’s death was one of the best pieces of news I have ever heard. He is the reason my brother disappeared. He was a killer, an oppressor, godless; a wolf in sheep’s clothing who usurped the call of Imam Mahdi. He was the same person who, when he was being chosen as leader after Khomeini, said, “One really must weep tears of blood for an Islamic society in which even the possibility [of leadership] of someone like me is raised…”.

The situation of the Ansar in Iran is not good at all. Their money has been stolen, and their lives are in extreme danger. Right now the country is under bombardment and I don't know what will happen to my family. I wish there were a way to save all of them from the hell that Iran has become.  There is no other way to save Iran. Iran has been reduced to ruins. A country that once claimed to be the center of the appearance of Imam Mahdi never truly understood him; instead, it opposed him and sought to kill him.