Security cops in Iran have allegedly threatened to withhold the body of a teenage boy killed during an anti-regime demo unless his family says his death was an accident.

Amir Mehdi Farkhipour, 17, was killed by security police during a protest in Laleh Park, Tehran on 28th September, according to reports in anti-regime media.

To add insult to injury, security forces allegedly told his family that they would not hand over his body if they told media about how he really died.

Iranian dissident Ebrahim Allahbakhshi – who was sentenced to five years in prison for practising Sufism in July 2018 – wrote on social media: “Amir Mehdi Farakhipour’s father was taken by force and forced to confess, they asked him to say in front of the camera that his son had an accident and the officers did not kill him, wait for the forced confessions.”

It is not clear how Amir was killed, but a netizen claiming to be the victim’s neighbour wrote on an anti-regime online blog: “They suffocated him.”

The protests that erupted across Iran on 16th September have so far claimed at least 337 lives and injured at least 1,160, according to independent estimates.