Who was the Iranian woman shot during the election protests?”
Amateur video of Neda Agha Soltani, young Iranian woman lying in the street has quickly become an iconic image of the country’s opposition movement. 27 years old Neda was shot by a Basij militia member as police in riot gear were breaking up a public gathering of about 300 protesters. Neda Agha Soltani The footage is less than a minute long and it captured the woman’s death moments after she was shot at a protest. The graphic video shows blood streaming from Neda’s nose and mouth. The bloody images of her death have unleashed a flood of outrage at the regime’s crackdown. Thousands of people inside and outside Iran have written online tributes to the Neda, many condemning the government and praising her as a martyr.
The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of a student shot dead in Tehran to take down mourning posters as they struggle to stop her becoming the rallying point for protests against the presidential election. Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, 26, was killed as she watched a pro-democracy protest, and mobile phone footage of her last moments have become a worldwide symbol of Iran’s turmoil. The authorities had already banned a public funeral or wake and have prevented gatherings in her name while the state-controlled media has not mentioned Miss Soltan’s death. Today it was reported that they had also told her family to take down the black mourning banners outside their home in the Tehran suburbs to prevent it becoming a place of pilgrimage. They were also told they could not hold a memorial service at a mosque. See the video at the link.
The young women was shot and killed by Iranian Basij, an Iranian paramilitary group under the command of the Revolutionary Guard. Over the disputed presidential election riot, police attacked hundreds of demonstrators with tear gas and fired live bullets in the air to disperse a rally in central Tehran. Various reports indicate she was attacked by a Basij sniper while watching the protests from the sidelines with her father. The bullet entered either her neck, or hit her in the heart, but as is clear from the video her death came very swiftly.
