Mehrdad Sabouri, Jewish by Faith, Kurdish by Culture, and a Victim of State Violence

Here is the unbelievable tale of Mehrdad Sabouri, Jewish by religion, Kurdish by culture, and the hell he and his brothers endured in Iran: “The Saga of an Iranian Jewish Kurdish Labor Activist,” by Aida Ghajar, Iran Wire, January 15, 2026:

He pressed the barrel of the gun against my chest. I pushed him. The weapon fell. But as it fell, he fired.”On November 15, 2022, during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, the entire contents of a shotgun shell were emptied into the thigh of Mehrdad Sabouri, a member of the Construction Workers’ Guild of Kamyaran and a former member of the Committee to Coordinate Aid in Establishing Labor Organizations in Kurdistan Province.I met Mehrdad Sabouri in Germany. He spoke with great difficulty about his suffering and resistance—a man who was imprisoned and tortured multiple times, and whose leg was torn open by a shotgun blast during the Jina (Mahsa) uprising. His life is a narrative of hardship, loss, resistance, and a continuous struggle against the Islamic Republic.Mehrdad was born into a Jewish family in the city of Kamyaran and endured “double oppression” as a religious minority. In 2004, one of his brothers, Farhad, was accused of cooperating with the Kurdish Komala Party and was subjected to such severe torture that he permanently lost his mental health.In 2007, Mehrdad lost two of his other brothers, Behrouz and Javad, who were working as Kolbars (cross-border fuel porters) in what he describes as a “staged” accident. Following their deaths, he became the head and sole provider of the family. However, the judicial system’s accusations against him persisted, alongside his activism in labor unions and environmental causes, until his fate ultimately led him into exile.

He introduces himself as having been born into a Jewish and Kurdish family in the city of Kamyaran—a family that, over the years, has been under constant pressure and discrimination from government institutions and security forces due to their ethnicity/nationality, religion, and civil and political activities.His first arrest dates back to 2008. Security forces, disguised as charity workers from the “Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation,” conducted house-to-house searches in Gazerkhani village. In Mehrdad’s room, they found a draft of the charter for the “Sanandaj Women’s Council.” That document—evidence of an attempt to establish a similar council in Kamyaran—was enough to justify a week of interrogation and torture at the Intelligence Ministry’s detention center.For the Sabouri family, their Jewish identity was weaponized against them. “The finger of accusation was always pointed at us, despite us committing no crime,” Mehrdad recounts. “They looked at us as spies. During interrogations, they repeatedly accused me of spying for Israel.”

This security-centric gaze permeated every aspect of life. In Gazerkhani, several Jewish-Kurdish families farmed and raised livestock, but systemic deprivation and discrimination forced many to migrate. Those who stayed were forced into self-censorship.

Where did those families go? To the big city of Tehran, where there might have been more jobs? Or out of Iran altogether, to a country where they don’t speak the language, in order to escape being persecuted as both Jews and Kurds? Sabouri doesn’t say.

“Imagine living as a Jew in a village in Kurdistan,” Mehrdad says. “You have land, you work, your children are born there—but they officially call you ‘The Jew’ as a slur. Why should they take my brother at age 15 and torture him? They held him for 15 days, blindfolded him, threw him into water, and fired shots over his head. Twenty years later, he is still under constant psychiatric treatment.”…

In 2017, Mehrdad and his friends observed International Workers’ Day in Kamyaran. The following day was his younger sister’s wedding; security forces raided the Sabouri family home that morning, and Mehrdad, his sister, and the family’s son-in-law were arrested. In total, eight members of the Sabouri family were detained and subjected to torture: “Inside the city, they beat me as much as they could, and then they would ask: ‘Are you Mehrdad Sabouri?'”

The Revolutionary Court judge sentenced Mehrdad to one year in prison simply for organizing International Workers’ Day: “In every interrogation, one of the primary accusations was: ‘What is your relationship with people outside the country? What relatives do you have abroad?’ The entire pressure was to force us into a televised [forced confession] interview. The interrogator would say: ‘I am in no hurry; I receive overtime pay [for this]. You will stay here until you talk.’ We refused to give in.”

The interrogator was paid “overtime” to make him and others talk.

Despite all these arrests, security surveillance, and torture, Mehrdad continued his activities. He explains the reason himself: “Being a protester was woven into my life. I cannot not be a protester. How can I not protest against things that affect me? I cannot celebrate my own day and just give congratulations. Can I not protest the oppression I face? Can I not protest the non-payment of my wages? In fact, every time I was arrested, it proved to me that my path was right.”…

Superhuman endurance and bravery kept him going, so that ultimately, he managed to escape from Iran to the West. How he did it he does not say.

Mehrdad Sabouri’s story of his life in Iran — a tale of torture and terror — is not different in kind, but only in degree, to the hellish stories that hundreds of thousands of other victims of the regime that has been tormenting the people of Iran for 47 years can tell. You may have wondered why the protestors feel they have nothing to lose. Now you know.