This article first appeared on our partner site, Independent Persian
“Knife-wielding thugs”, “weeds that must be uprooted, cut down and thrown away”, these were some of the words Ali Khamenei used on 10 June 1992. One might think he was referring to organised criminal gangs. He was not. He was describing the people of Mashhad, who had taken to the streets after security forces killed a high-school student in the city’s Kuy-e Tollab neighbourhood.
