Iran Holocaust

Alireza Safavi Fazeli

Alireza Safavi Fazeli was shot dead by security forces on the night of 8 January 2026. The last image of him alive shows him flashing a V-for-victory sign in the street.

Portrait of Alireza Safavi Fazeli, protester, killed in Iran on 8 January 2026.
Alireza Safavi Fazeli — photograph released by the family, via Iran International · Javidnaman.

“The last picture taken of him alive is of a raised hand, two fingers apart.”

Killed
Night of 8 January 2026
Cause
Live fire by security forces
Last image
Family photograph taken hours before his death
Documented by
Iran International (Javidnaman)

Who was Alireza Safavi Fazeli?

Alireza Safavi Fazeli was killed by security forces on the night of 8 January 2026, the first of the Two Nights. The photograph his family released afterwards was taken hours earlier in the street: he is looking at the camera and holding up two fingers.

That gesture — the V sign — has been carried through every Iranian protest cycle since 1979, and it is the reason so many of the January images were filmed at all. In a country where independent reporting is criminalised, the phone camera is the evidentiary record, and the poses people struck for it were deliberate: they were addressed to a future audience, on the assumption that someone would eventually count.

The Two Nights: 8–9 January 2026

On the nights of 8 and 9 January 2026 the Islamic Republic answered nationwide protests with sustained live fire in more than eighty towns and cities, under a near-total internet shutdown. Human-rights monitors describe those forty-eight hours as the deadliest episode of protest repression in the country since 1988, and the beginning of what Iranians now call the Crimson Winter.

Because the shutdown cut most of the country off from the outside world, the record of who died was assembled afterwards, name by name, from family testimony, burial permits, hospital documents and mobile phone footage recovered once connectivity returned. Alireza Safavi Fazeli is one of those names.

Video and archive

No verified video of Alireza Safavi Fazeli is in the public record that this project can confirm. The film below documents the events in which he was killed, and the Javidnaman archive holds the family photographs and case notes for the January 2026 dead.

Could Iran’s protests topple the regime?. More documentary footage is collected on the videos page.

Sources

Why this page exists

Names surface for a few days and then disappear under the next news cycle. This page keeps a dated, citation-ready record of what is known about Alireza Safavi Fazeli, with the photograph his family chose to release and links to the monitors who verify such cases. Corrections and additional documentation are welcome through the organisations listed under sources and methodology.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Alireza Safavi Fazeli?

Alireza Safavi Fazeli was shot dead by security forces on the night of 8 January 2026. The last image of him alive shows him flashing a V-for-victory sign in the street.

When and where was Alireza Safavi Fazeli killed?

Alireza Safavi Fazeli was killed on 8 January 2026 in Iran, during the crackdown of 8–9 January 2026 and the weeks that followed.

What were the Two Nights?

The Two Nights are 8 and 9 January 2026, when Iranian security forces used live ammunition against protesters in more than eighty towns and cities under a near-total internet shutdown. Monitors record them as the deadliest 48 hours of protest repression in Iran since 1988.

Who documented Alireza Safavi Fazeli’s death?

The case is recorded by independent monitors including Iran Human Rights, HRANA and Hengaw, and in Iran International’s Javidnaman ("immortal names") archive of those killed in the January 2026 uprising.