Martyr Reza Shamaghdari

Reza Shamaghdari was born into a religious and traditional family in 1936. His father was a wood supplier and although he had fathered 8 children, he did not neglect his children and went all out to raise all his children to grow up being devout Muslim.

Reza was the sixth child of a family of 10. He went gymnastics during his school years.

He got married at the age of 24 and starting working at a small paint shop. After some time, their union was blessed with a child that brought more joy and happiness to their family.

Reza joined Imam Khomeini’s movement against the western-backed Pahlavi regime.

Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Reza, like other people, tried to pull his weight to consolidate the newly born revolution. So, he began cutting newspaper articles and putting them on his shop window to increase the public awareness. In this way, the people in his neighborhood followed the recent news from Reza Shamaghdari’s shop. The days passed in this way and Reza became hated by the MKO members. They had even made several failed attempts on his life while he was in the shop. Finally, on January 30, 1985, two MKO members riding a Honda 125cc motorbike, rushed to his shop at 8:30 in the morning and shot him in the head while he was reading newspapers to cut news pieces as always. People who witnessed the attack gathered around the shop and some tried to capture the armed assailants, but they managed to escape.

Sometime later, MKO published a piece detailing the reason for killing Reza: “… one of the torturers and agents of repression in Mashhad, named Reza Shamaghdari, was punished based on previous identification and according to a detailed audacious operational plan… The People’s holy warriors made the regime’s repression fingertips blood run cold more than before.” MKO had no other purpose but to create fear and anxiety in public, however all Reza Shamaghdari did was raising public awareness by newspaper pieces and reaching out to those in need.

Now after some three decades, his family calls on the international organizations to punish the perpetrators of this cowardly act of terror.