“A third-semester student, shot in the head in the centre of his own city.”
- Age
- 19
- Killed
- 8 January 2026, central Bandar Abbas
- Studying
- Industrial management, University of Hormozgan
- Cause
- Gunshot to the head
- Documented by
- Iran International (Javidnaman), HRANA
Who was Khaled Mollaie?
Khaled Mollaie was nineteen and three semesters into an industrial-management degree at the University of Hormozgan. He had grown up in Bandar Abbas, the port city that handles a large share of Iran’s seaborne trade and whose young people face some of the country’s highest graduate unemployment.
He was shot in the head in central Bandar Abbas on the evening of 8 January 2026. A head wound at close range is the signature injury of the January crackdown: monitoring groups recorded a disproportionate number of shots to the head, neck and chest, a pattern that is incompatible with the crowd-control purpose the state claimed for its deployment.
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. Khaled Mollaie is one of those names.
Video and archive
No verified video of Khaled Mollaie 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 Khaled Mollaie, 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 Khaled Mollaie?
Khaled Mollaie, 19, a third-semester industrial-management student at the University of Hormozgan, was shot in the head in central Bandar Abbas on the evening of 8 January 2026.
When and where was Khaled Mollaie killed?
Khaled Mollaie was killed on 8 January 2026 in Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan 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 Khaled Mollaie’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
- Ahmad Kazemi Shahroui — 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

