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Facebook Turns Iran's Neda into a Martyr

Posted June 25, 2009

BY Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Before she was a martyr, an icon or a weapon, Neda Agha-Soltan was just a girl.

The daughter of a government worker in Tehran, she was the second of three children, a lover of music and travel.

Neda, 26, studied Islamic philosophy at Azad University and got a job at a travel agency. On the side, she studied Turkish, hoping to one day become a guide for foreign tours.

In photos, she looks like a typical middle-class Iranian: smiling and surrounded by friends. She evidently liked to dye her hair—recent photos show her tresses in every shade from blond to near-black—though she went out wearing a veil.

She also studied singing and the violin, and a piano was about to be delivered.

On a trip to Turkey two months ago, she met the man who would become her fiance: 37-year-old photojournalist Caspian Makan.

None of it was to be.

On Saturday, during the chaos of Tehran's Sea of Green protests, an ordinary life became an extraordinary death.

It took a single gunshot and a phone-cam to transform the gentle student into the "Angel of Iran," a potent symbol of tyranny that threatens to help topple Iran's theocracy.

Her quick and bloody death, seen across the world, has moved millions, from the most powerful men in the world, to the least.

"We are Neda!" is the new rallying cry on the streets of Tehran. Posters of the slain woman, either open-eyed in death or smiling gently in a posed head shot, are carried aloft like precious religious icons.

President Obama singled out her killing, calling it "heartbreaking."

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late shah, showed reporters that he carries her picture in his breast pocket and declared, "I have added her to the list of my daughters."

She has inspired songs, paintings and poems.

At a Web site called WeAreAllNeda.com, tearful tributes pour in hourly in dozens of languages.

"Neda, your death will not be in vain," they write. "R.I.P sister. My heart hurts every time I think about you and tears cover my face."

The only hearts Neda Soltan hasn't touched are those of the ruling mullahs in Iran. Instead, they quake at her growing threat to their power.

Her parents were ordered out of their fourth floor apartment in East Tehran, neighbors told The Guardian newspaper yesterday. No one knows where they went.

Their traditional black mourning banner was taken down and they were told they could not hold a funeral.

Such is the terror of the regime.

The propaganda machine is also in overdrive trying to explain away her murder.

Iran's state-run news channel broadcast a report called "Spreading lies" that branded the video a distortion spread by the "Zionist" BBC and CNN and blamed the shooting on a protester firing blindly in the crowd.

There have been no reports of protesters firing guns.

The hard-line Javan newspaper went even further - alleging that Neda was killed by "thugs" hired by a BBC correspondent to spice up his film.

Neda's music teacher, Hamid Panahi, who held her as she died, is the main source of most information about her because he defied threats against talking about her to foreign reporters.

"They know me. They know where I am. They can come and get me whenever they want," Panahi told the Los Angeles Times.

He called Neda a "beam of light" who "couldn't stand the injustice of it all. All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted."

Panahi said he and Neda were stuck in a traffic jam due to the protests and got out of the car for air when the single shot hit her in the chest and blood began to pour from her mouth, nose and eyes.

"Don't be afraid, Neda dear, don't be afraid," Panahi can be heard saying in Farsi on the heartrending video.

Witnesses said she was talking on a mobile phone when she was hit. Some suggested she was targeted for using a phone, a crucial technological weapon in Iran's Sea of Green rebellion.

She wasn't cold before a video of her death was e-mailed out of the country and posted to Facebook by an Iranian expatriot in the Netherlands whose identity is being protected.

"It shocked me very, very much," he said. "I was sure at that time everyone in the world, if they see this movie, they'll be shocked. I felt that I must broadcast it because I try to show to the world what is going on in my country."

Two things about the death resonate in particular: Her name means "voice" in Farsi, and she died staring uncomprehendingly at the sky.

One of several tribute pages on Facebook says, "Neda died with open eyes. Shame on us who live with closed eyes."

Beliefnet founder Steve Waldman said Neda's martyrdom wields unusual power, not just because she was a pretty young woman, but because she was just an innocent onlooker.

"She becomes a martyr in a way a rock-thrower wouldn't. Her death therefore will hurt the regime infinitely more," he said.

"That video is the greatest weapon freedom fighters have."