“He had come home for a few days. He was buried at home instead.”
- Age
- 24
- Trade
- Commercial diver and firefighter
- Killed
- January 2026, Najafabad, Isfahan province
- Cause
- Live fire during protest policing
- Documented by
- Iran International (Javidnaman)
Who was Hossein Radi?
Hossein Radi was twenty-four, a trained diver and firefighter from Najafabad, west of Isfahan. Like many young Iranians with a technical trade, he had taken work abroad — in his case in Armenia — because wages at home no longer covered a life. He had come back for a short visit with his family days before he was killed.
Isfahan province was among the heaviest-hit regions of the Crimson Winter, and it later became the centre of the execution wave: Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan carried out several of the 2026 protest hangings. Radi’s death, in the streets, and those hangings, months later inside the same province, are two halves of one policy.
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. Hossein Radi is one of those names.
Video and archive
No verified video of Hossein Radi 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.
Iran students stage the first large anti-government protests since the deadly crackdown. More documentary footage is collected on the videos page.
Sources
- Iran International · Javidnaman archive
- Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO)
- HRANA — Human Rights Activists News Agency
- Sources and methodology on this site
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 Hossein Radi, 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 Hossein Radi?
Hossein Radi, 24, a diver and firefighter from Najafabad in Isfahan province, had returned from work in Armenia to see his family days before he was killed in the January 2026 protests.
When and where was Hossein Radi killed?
Hossein Radi was killed on 9 January 2026 in Najafabad, Isfahan province, 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 Hossein Radi’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.
Related pages
- Sasan Azadvar Jonaqani — another biography from the same period.
- The Two Nights — 8–9 January 2026 in detail.
- The protest record · Faces · Victims database
- All memorial biographies · In Memoriam
