Suspicious Death of Farzad Khosh Boresh in Sari Intelligence Detention Centre

Wednesday 19 November 2025

Witnesses reported having seen extensive bruising on Farzad Khosh Boresh’s body following his death in the Sari Intelligence Detention Centre.  His family suspect this resulted from his torture under interrogation, aimed at extracting a forced confession, amid ongoing official denials.

Farzad Khosh Boresh, 31 years old, died under suspicious circumstances at the Sari Intelligence Detention Centre (in Mazandaran Province in the north of Iran).  Islamic Republic authorities have insisted that underlying health issues caused his sudden death on 18 November 2025.

According to reliable sources, officials at the Sari Intelligence Detention Centre immediately set about transferring the body of Mr. Khosh Boresh, a political prisoner, to the forensic medical examiner’s office, but had refused to provide any official report or statement regarding the detainee’s cause of death.  This conduct has heightened suspicions that the authorities may be in the process of doctoring the official report under compilation to erase any evidence of torture, maltreatment, or culpability on their part in the fate of Mr. Khosh Boresh.

Cover-Up Efforts and Security Intimidation

Security forces were even present at Mr. Khosh Boresh’s burial ceremony, keeping a careful watch over proceedings there.  Reports indicate that Islamic Republic Ministry of Intelligence agents filmed and photographed mourners at the cemetery and issued warnings to family members and associates against the publication of any news or details concerning the young man’s suspicious death – a move clearly designed to intimidate the grieving family and all those in attendance.

This fits with a long pattern and history of such behaviour on the part of the regime’s intelligence and security apparatus.  Torture and maltreatment of political detainees upon arrest and transferal to custody is endemic in the Islamic Republic.  There exists a long line of cases where detainees appear to have been killed under incarceration, with authorities then leaning on family members and close associates of the deceased to bury their loved one quietly, accede to the official regime narrative, and not to give any account that conflicts with it.  The extended family and social circle of the deceased is then put under surveillance by regime intelligence agents and intimidatory tactics are continually employed in an attempt to keep them muted and under unbearable pressure.

However, these families, ordinary Iranians, and activists are increasingly pushing back and demanding proper scrutiny of these incidents and the holding to account of those responsible.    

However, the remarkably quick transfer of Mr. Khosh Boresh’s body to the forensic medical centre by regime officials, accompanied by what amounts to a news blackout regarding this death in custody.  The extended family of t Security forces quickly moved his body to forensic medicine. They have offered no details. Yet, sources close to the family contradict the official account. Bruises and contusions cover his body. These marks suggest severe abuse. Farzad resisted pressure for false admissions. Such tactics appear often in security facilities. Therefore, human rights groups call for independent probes.  

Signs of Beating Undermine Official Claims

The remarkably quick and seemingly secretive transfer of Mr. Khosh Boresh’s body from the Sari Intelligence Detention Centre to the forensic medical examiner’s office, as well as regime officialdom’s apparent caginess over what had taken place at the detention centre, had already put the Khosh Boresh family on alert.  Witnesses who viewed Mr. Khosh Boresh’s body before transfer to the medical examiner’s facility have stated that he was covered in bruises and marks indicating multiple traumas with contusions marking all over his body.  This of course sharply contradicts the initial explanation given by officials at the detention centre, who claimed that Mr. Khosh Boresh had fallen sick while in detention and then deceased owing to an underlying illness having been transferred to hospital.  However, there is no evidence to support these claims – on the contrary, the extensive injuries witnesses have described seeing on his body indicate that he died a violent death…

A trusted source close to the Khosh Boresh family remarked, “We spotted clear signs of a violent beating right away […] There was nothing to indicate a natural death.  They [the agents/guards] prevented us from carrying out a closer inspection [of his body].”

Timeline of Farzad’s Arrests

Mr. Khosh Boresh had been arrested and detained twice by the Islamic Republic authorities in just under three months, on account of having made “critical political posts” against the theocratic regime on social media.  He was first arrested in August 2025, detained for a while, and later freed on bail and warned to desist from engaging in online criticism or political commentary against the regime.

However, on 12 November 2025, agents from the regime’s notorious Ministry of Intelligence returned and arrested him at his family home without warning.  In a matter of a mere six days, Mr. Khosh Boresh lay dead in custody – with all indications pointing to his having been killed under torture.

This narrow timeframe raises serious questions about what exactly unfolded during the young man’s incarceration.  In Iran, repeated detentions often run in tandem with escalating harsh treatment, abuse, and torture – with regime interrogators often ramping up the pressure applied to the detainee before them in order to extract a confession.  The situation becomes even graver when the detainee in question holds out and refuses to provide the sought after “admission”.  It is widely believed that Mr. Khosh Boresh had resisted such attempts to force a confession out of him, along with the severe physical violence this would have entailed, until his body could take no more.    

Family Silenced Amid Ongoing Threats

The Khosh Boresh family has so far refrained from giving interviews or providing direct information due to the continuing threats they are receiving from the regime’s security forces.  This in and of itself is significant given that there is long history of sustained intimidation being applied to grieving families by the authorities in Iran typically aimed at preventing the divulging of information relating to their loved one’s death in detention, particularly when there exists credible evidence of the deceased having been tortured beforehand. 

The suspicious death of Mr. Khosh Boresh is yet another example (the latest in a horrendously long line) of the violation of the basic human right to life, as well as the brutal and systematic torture employed within the prisons and security forces’ detention centres of the ruling Islamic Republic dictatorship in Iran – a process that continues hidden away from public view and scrutiny, and utterly devoid of judicial independence.

The terrible ordeal and death of Farzad Khosh Boresh in the Sari Intelligence Detention Centre – testified to by the signs of vicious torture on the young man’s body – as well as the complete lack of transparency and accountability as regards the process of his arrest, incarceration, interrogation, and subsequent informing of his family (of his death in custody), amounts to the latest flagrant and grave violation of human rights and the basic principles of due process in Iran.

CODIR unequivocally condemns the monstrous treatment of Farzad Khosh Boresh, resulting in his extrajudicial murder, as well as that of his grieving family at the hands of the intelligence and security apparatus of the Islamic Republic dictatorship.  The shameful harassment and intimidation of the grieving Khosh Boresh family by the authorities in Iran must stop immediately.  We call for full and proper scrutiny of the circumstances of Mr. Khosh Boresh’s arrest, detention, and interrogation leading up to his death and the declining of the authorities so far to provide any explanation as to what took place.  We furthermore demand that those officials who bear culpability for this episode are duly brought to account before the law.