Iran Holocaust

Meysam Kazemi

Meysam Kazemi, a Tehran firefighter and athlete, joined the protests off duty and was beaten with batons and then shot in the neck in Parand on the evening of 9 January 2026.

Portrait of Meysam Kazemi, firefighter, killed in Iran on 9 January 2026.
Meysam Kazemi — photograph released by the family, via Iran International · Javidnaman.

“He spent his working life pulling people out of fires. He was killed off duty, in the street.”

Profession
Firefighter, Tehran fire service
Killed
Evening of 9 January 2026, Parand
Cause
Beaten with batons, then shot in the neck
Documented by
Iran International (Javidnaman)

Who was Meysam Kazemi?

Meysam Kazemi was a serving firefighter with the Tehran fire service and a competitive athlete. On the evening of 9 January 2026 he joined the protests in Parand, the new town south-west of the capital, while off duty.

Accounts collected from witnesses describe him being beaten with batons before he was shot in the neck. He is one of at least three emergency-service personnel — firefighters and rescue workers — recorded killed during the Two Nights, a detail that undercuts the state’s framing of the dead as foreign-directed rioters.

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. Meysam Kazemi is one of those names.

Video and archive

No verified video of Meysam Kazemi 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’s regime caught between new protests and a US military buildup. 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 Meysam Kazemi, 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 Meysam Kazemi?

Meysam Kazemi, a Tehran firefighter and athlete, joined the protests off duty and was beaten with batons and then shot in the neck in Parand on the evening of 9 January 2026.

When and where was Meysam Kazemi killed?

Meysam Kazemi was killed on 9 January 2026 in Parand, Tehran 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 Meysam Kazemi’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.