When Ali Rahbar disappeared as antigovernment protests swept across Iran last month, there were only two facts his family knew for certain.
He was alive on Jan. 8 when security forces arrested him at demonstrations in the city of Mashhad. And he was dead two weeks later.
Relatives say the only call the family received from the authorities about Mr. Rahbar — a 33-year-old fitness coach who loved posting weight lifting videos and poetry online — was instructing them to collect his body.
The circumstances of Mr. Rahbar’s disappearance and his death remain murky. But his case is one of several that rights groups are investigating as potential extrajudicial killings of protesters held in state custody.
The deadly crackdown on protests have stoked outrage in Iran, as the Islamic Republic faces one of the most vulnerable moments in its 47-year history, amid widespread discontent and the looming threat of a U.S. attack.
The government has shown it has no intention of backing down. Rights groups estimate that thousands of protesters have been killed and that around 40,000 have been detained, so far, and they say they are concerned that the authorities may execute some protesters to dissuade others from further dissent.
The New York Times spoke to three relatives of Mr. Rahbar, living outside Iran, who were in touch with the family in the weeks since he disappeared. All asked to withhold their full names to protect loved ones inside the country from retribution.
“No lawyer, no court, no kind of normal procedure,” said Borhan, a cousin of Mr. Rahbar who lives in Europe. “Nothing happened at all — he was just executed.”
Iranian authorities, including the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, have been adamant that no protesters have been executed so far. And the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, Mizan, published an article about Mr. Rahbar’s case in late January, calling it “fake news” and insisting no one with his name had been executed or detained.
The circumstances of exactly how Mr. Rahbar died are a potential flashpoint.
President Trump warned in early January that he would strike Iran if it killed “innocent protesters.” By mid-January, when the protests had largely been crushed, Mr. Trump backed away from those threats, saying, without providing evidence, that he had prevented the executions of 837 protesters.
Mr. Rahbar’s name appeared on a list of nearly 3,000 people that the government said were killed in the protests. The list, which was released last week by Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, does not say how those people died.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry and spokesman for the judiciary did not respond to emailed requests for comment, and The Times was unable to reach the local prosecutor in Mashhad.
A small circle of loved ones buried Mr. Rahbar quickly and discreetly on Jan. 22, according to his relatives, in a service they said was strictly monitored by security forces.
They said the family was ordered not to commemorate the 40th day of mourning after his death, a customary ritual among Iran’s Shiite Muslim majority. Whether or not they and the families of thousands of other slain protesters comply will be a test of Iran’s crackdown — if it has succeeded in silencing them.
One rights group, the New York-based Center for Iran Human Rights, said it had obtained testimony that Mr. Rahbar had not been executed, but died under torture. That claim could not be independently verified, and Mr. Rahbar’s cousins said security forces would not allow the family to open his shroud to inspect his body.
“His mother was only allowed to see his face” said his cousin Anna, who lives abroad.
Raha Bahreini, an Iran researcher for Amnesty International, said her organization had gathered enough evidence from the crackdown to suggest “widespread and systemic patterns” of enforced disappearances, torture and abuse of detainees in state custody.
Amnesty and three other rights groups — Hengaw, the Center for Iran Human Rights and Iran Human Rights — said they were also in contact with families who reported being called by the authorities to inform them that their detained relatives had been sentenced to death. The families said that they had not been notified of any preceding trial.
Hengaw said that it was not certain if what the families were being told was a formal death sentence, or if it is about intimidating or putting pressure on detainees and their relatives. “Both scenarios remain possible,” said Arina Moradi of the Norway-based organization.
The Iranian authorities have used execution — or the threat of it — to crack down on past protests, according to Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights group.
Trials in the previous crackdowns were often rushed, Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam said, giving defendants scant opportunity to mount a legal defense.
In Mr. Rahbar’s case, there was no evidence of any legal process at all, he said, adding that his team was investigating four other suspected cases of extrajudicial killings or executions at four separate detention sites in Iran.
“It’s the crisis of impunity that is feeding these cycles of atrocities in Iran,” said Ms. Bahreini of Amnesty International.
For Mr. Rahbar’s family, the only solace is in their memories of a playful, handsome man who loved to dance.
“They took his life, but they will never erase who he was,” his cousin Anna said.
Mr. Rahbar was not particularly political, Borhan said, but had joined the recent protests out of frustration with Iran’s clerical rulers and international sanctions, which he felt had shut his generation off from the world and stifled their hopes for the future.
“He knew he was risking his life,” Borhan said. “He told me, ‘This is not only for my country, not only for my mother, and not only for my family. I am thinking about myself, too. I want to live. I want to enjoy life, like other people all over the world.’”
The family, his cousins said, was not allowed to hold a public memorial service to mourn him — a restriction that families of several slain protesters have said was imposed on them by the authorities.
In Mashhad, the city of Mr. Rahbar’s birth and death, some have found ways to quietly honor him. Photographs his cousins shared with The Times show his gravesite and a picture of his face encircled by heaps of wilting flowers.
Online, supporters have tagged black hearts and condolence messages on Mr. Rahbar’s Instagram page — in particular, a picture he posted of himself, biceps bulging, with the caption: “Willpower is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.”
