Mohsen Langarneshin, "Another victim of the Iranian death machine."

 

My dear Iranian friend, Paymaneh Sabet, refuses to keep silent about the atrocities in her homeland that happen daily. She refuses to comply with the UN directive of silence and instead continues speaking out to defend her people.

I leave it to the United Nations to judge: Should I stay silent? Elsewhere, ropes seek necks that burden society with their crimes—perhaps justly, perhaps not. I, Paymaneh Sabet, believe many criminals are sick, needing treatment, not death. I don’t know why some laws execute them—perhaps they lack the means to reform, perhaps they think it earns divine reward, or perhaps other reasons. But in my occupied homeland, Iran, the story is reversed. Our robust, athletic youth, Navid Afkari, cried out in anguish: “They look for necks to fit their ropes.” A bitter, dark irony. In my Iran, they seek necks for ropes, bodies for flames, and breaths to be crushed under rubble.

This regime, which dries our lakes for profit, would it spare the organs of our youth? World, hear this! They seek necks for their ropes and excuses for their surgical blades to steal our youth’s organs and turn them into cash/profit.” Lifeless bodies are buried in secret, families denied a final farewell, or corpses interred at night under security to hide what was taken before death.

And now, Mohsen Langarneshin, a young man who lived only thirty-four years, fell victim to this death machine under the rule of those who’ve neared a century, clinging to life with claws and teeth, aided by doctors and rare drugs, seemingly unwilling to embrace their promised paradise and its beautiful houris. Mohsen, engaged and brimming with love and dreams, was tortured into confessing to spying for Mossad—charges he and human rights activists repeatedly denied. He was sentenced in an unfair trial at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court Branch 15, presided over by Judge Abolqasem Salavati, known as the “Death Judge.” His confessions, he said, were “nonsense” extracted under duress, threats, and false promises. He was forced to recite a prewritten script on camera.

At dawn on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Ghezel Hesar Prison, Mohsen was killed—but how? Did a noose tighten around his neck? Or did a surgical blade, harvesting his organs, take his life? Why was his body not returned to his family? Why were his mother and father, who begged outside the prison through the night, denied a final goodbye? His mother said others spoke of unfair trials, but she never believed her turn would come. His fiancée, her heart breaking with every breath, still hears Mohsen’s laughter in her dreams. Did the regime forgo the organs of this vibrant young man? Or did he die under torture? If not, why hide his body?

Since the United Nations urged me to stay silent, in this short time, dozens have been executed. Thousands in Bandarabbas’ fire lost their lives or had their livelihoods reduced to ash—survivors with no hope, no home. Can any human, any rights advocate, stay silent? Let alone urge others to do so? Our silence will cost the world dearly. If we stay quiet today, this regime, with its venomous ideologies, will claim not just Iranians but non-Iranians across borders. These ropes or surgical blades, serving the theft of our youth’s organs, rob them of life and love—as they’ve done in terrorist attacks backed by this regime. One day, for a baseless reason, in a way you cannot imagine, it will be your turn.

Mohsen Langarneshin is not just a name. Like thousands of Iranian youth, he is a victim of a horrific saga of tyranny and pain—a saga repeated for the umpteenth time and, unless this regime falls, not the last. The regime, with its ropes or blades, choked his breath and stole his body from his family. World, the ropes and blades, which today strangle justice in Iran, will tomorrow find the neck and body of global justice
I, Paymaneh Sabet, by the mission that the meaning of my name has placed upon me, cry for justice and life for Mohsen and thousands of Iranian youth lost to the regime’s ropes and blades, and I will not be silenced until this tyranny falls.