Police in Bellevue, Wash., are investigating reports that a man pointed a gun and shouted “free Palestine” at demonstrators during a local rally on March 1.
The rally, organized by Iranian-American human rights advocate Homeira Bakhtiari, 53, called for regime change in Iran following the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike on Feb. 28.
Video captured by demonstrator Saghar Amini shows a man leaning out of the passenger-side window of a dark BMW. Demonstrators said they saw a gun. A separate video recorded by another witness shows the man shouting, “free Palestine.”
“The department is currently investigating this incident from the weekend,” Drew Anderson, public information officer for the Bellevue Police Department, told JNS.
Bakhtiari told JNS that potential safety concerns at her rallies pale in comparison to the dangers faced by loved ones in Iran.
“Our story is different from others,” she said. “People in Iran have been killed. This month, over 50,000 people have been killed. So, I do need to do something about my country.”
‘Everything was perfect’
Born in Iran in 1972, Bakhtiari said she remembers life before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
‘Everything was perfect’
She said conditions changed dramatically. When she entered school at age 7, she was required to wear a hijab and did not understand why.
“I remember all the time we were chanting at the school, death to America, death to Israel, and I was fed up with that. Not just me. All the children,” she told JNS. “Constantly they were saying our enemy is Israel, our enemy is the United States.”
Bakhtiari publicly shared for the first time on March 2 the story of her father’s arrest, one of her most painful memories. She told JNS that she did not feel safe to share the story until Khamenei was dead.
When she was a child, two men came to her family’s home during lunch and asked her father to step outside.
“He went out and didn’t come back for 40 days,” she said. The family searched hospitals and government offices before learning he was being held in Evin Prison.
Her father suffered a heart attack while detained, she said. He never spoke about his imprisonment, and later endured additional heart attacks before his death. “Even now, we don’t know why they arrested him,” she said.
Bakhtiari immigrated to the United States more than two decades ago and has organized rallies in the Seattle area since 2017. While she described the United States as a country she loves, she said her heart remains in Iran.
“Many people like me fled Iran to have a better life, but to be honest with you, always our hearts and minds remain in Iran,” she told JNS. “They want democracy, they want to live a normal life. We are not greedy people.”
Bakhtiari told JNS she “couldn’t believe it” when she heard Khamenei had been killed.
“We were celebrating,” she said. “That was one of the best days in my entire life. We were wishing, we were dreaming about this, and the dream came true.”
Despite the weekend’s incident, Bakhtiari said she intends to continue organizing.
“I’m so hopeful that this struggle and suffering is going to end soon,” she said, adding that, like her family member in Iran, she is “grateful to the decisive action” taken by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the efforts of the U.S. Army and the Israel Defense Forces.
“We are so thankful for what they are doing for us and for the whole world,” Bakhtiari told JNS, also thanking the Jewish and Indian communities in the greater Seattle area for “supporting us from day one.”
