Arnika Dabagh
آرنیکا دباغ
2026
- Taken
- 9 January 2026
- Age
- only 15 years old
- From
- Gorgan, Golestan
Kept on this phone only. Nothing is sent.
Their life
Arnika was a schoolgirl from Gorgan and a competitive swimmer. At national events she had already won a silver medal, two bronzes and a string of other awards, and she was training for her next races with one aim: to set new national records.
The people close to her remember her as energetic and hard-working, a lover of animals who was always busy on social media. The week after she died she was due to swim in the Zayandeh Rud competition; her family expected a medal and had planned a celebration.
After she was gone, the swimmers at the men's national league in Tehran's Azadi complex stood for a minute of silence in her memory.
How the regime took them
On 9 January 2026, during the protests in Gorgan, Arnika was shot by the regime's security forces. Phone lines were cut that night, so the people around her could not reach emergency services in time; the ambulance came late and she died of her wounds. Her sister later found her bloodstained glasses.
Afterwards security officials went to her school, questioned students and held sessions to push the regime's account of what happened. (The Boroumand Center gives her age as 15; BBC Persian and Iran Human Rights give 19.)
