Mother Maliheh Rahbari(Mother Partovi)
Mother Maliheh Rahbari, Mother Partovi, was born in Tabriz on —-. She passed away in Tehran at the age of 96 on 29 Dey 1391 (18 Jan. 2013). Mother was a brave freedom fighter in her own right and the mother of execued Mohammad Ali Partovi. During the Shah´s regime regime, when Mohammad Ali Partovi was arrested in relation to Organization of People´s Fadai Guerrillas, Mother Partovi engaged in political activities together with other mothers and families of political prisoners.
The Islamic regime arrested Mohammad Ali in 1361 (1982) on the road from Mashhad to Tehran and executed him together with thousands of other political prisoners in Shahrivar 1367 (Aug.-Sep. 1988) and buried his lifeless body in secret, without any explanation to his family, in one of the mass graves in Khavaran abandoned Cemetery. Mother Partovi’s back broke for ever after the execution of her son Mohammad Ali, a wound from which Mother never recovered. Mother Partovi sought justice for her son until the last moments of her life. Mother Partovi, like other Khavaran Mothers, regularly visited Khavaran and actively participated in the anniversaries and the ceremonies held on the last Friday of each year by the families in Khavaran until two years before her death when sickness made her home-bound.
Mohammad Ali Partovi
Mohammad Ali Partovi was born in Tabriz on 28 Khordad 1326 (19 June 1947). He was married and a mechanical engineer. Mohammad Ali began his political activities in the second half of the 1340s (1960s) during the time of Mohammad Reza Shah. At the beginning of his activities he joined the Organisation of People´s Fadai Guerrillas and was arrested in the summer of 1350 (1971). A secret police of the Shah at the time of his arrest, when he intended to run away, shot him three times. He was injured and was arrested. The court martial sentenced him to death for defending his ideology. However, due to international pressure, the Shah was forced to commute his sentence and that of some of his fellow prisoners to life imprisonment. Mohammad Ali spent about 8 years in various prisons of the Shah’s regime. On the night of 30 Dey 1357 (20 Jan. 1979), he was one of the last political prisoners released from the prison.
After the revolution of 1357 (1979), Mohammad Ali remained active for a time with the Organization of People´s Fadai Guerrillas. Later on he left this organisation and joined the Union of Communist Militants. The Islamic Republic arrested Mohammad Ali in Tehran in 1361 (1982) and after a period of torture sentenced him to death. However, they did not execute him until they hanged him in the Gohardasht Prison in Shahrivar 1367 (Aug.-Sep. 1988) and buried him in one of the unmarked mass graves in Khavaran abandoned Cemetery.
Mohammad Ali in the last visit by his family before the massacre of political prisoners expressed his concern about the situation in prison and in reply to his relatives who said, using his own favourite expression, that “this too is a wave and will go away,” responded by saying: “No, this is a storm and will sweep everything away with it.”