Some deaths demand to be witnessed.

Baktash Abtin was a poet, a filmmaker, and a member of the Iranian Writers’ Association, an organization that the Islamic Republic has spent decades trying to destroy. He was arrested in 2020, along with other members of the association, on charges that were as vague as they were predictable: “assembly and collusion against national security.” In Iran, this charge is a template. It fits any writer, any artist, any person who dares to think out loud.

He was sent to Evin Prison. And there, in one of the most notorious prisons in the world, he contracted COVID-19. He was denied adequate medical treatment. He was denied transfer to a hospital until it was too late. He died in January 2022, at the age of 47.

The Islamic Republic did not execute........

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