In Memory of a Father Lost to Injustice – Romina Hadavandkhani Dedicates Her Silver Medal
11-June-2025
Category: executions
11 June 2025
News Category: Prisoners
Breathing in Confinement – Tuesday, 11 June 2025: Romina Hadavandkhani, a member of Iran’s national women’s ice hockey team, held a photo of her father, Bahram Hadavandkhani, in her trembling hands after winning a silver medal in the Asian championships, dedicating her medal of honour to him—a father no longer by her side, yet whose name still weighs heavily on her shoulders.
On 8 April this year, after 17 years in prison, Bahram Hadavandkhani was executed. Time and again, he had been taken to solitary confinement with the hope of clemency and a last-minute reprieve from the gallows. Throughout these long years, friends, family, and charitable supporters worked tirelessly to gain the victim’s family’s forgiveness in order to save his life. But ultimately, despite the hope that had been nurtured, the noose sealed his fate.
In a story even more tragic than the sentence itself, it is said that Bahram was not the one who committed the murder; rather, his younger brother, Ghooghool, had done it. Bahram took the blame to protect his younger sibling. After years of striving to save his brother, Ghooghool himself lost his life in a conflict last year.
Another of Bahram’s children wrote a heart-wrenching message before the execution:
“My only wish is to one day embrace my father, to always have his shadow above my head.”
But that wish, like so many hopes held by the children of those caught in the grip of judicial violence, was never fulfilled.
This is not just a sorrowful tale—it is a stark warning to us all: justice does not lie in passing judgment, but in listening to the truth, in thorough examination, and in upholding human dignity. The time has come for us to stand alongside political prisoners in the campaign Tuesdays Against Execution and strive to end the death penalty. May the gallows and this irreversible, inhumane punishment be forever removed from our homeland.