‘It seemed like quite a do’: why East Grinstead hosts one of Scientology’s glitziest evenings

In the nearly 30 years that Diane Juchau has lived in East Grinstead, not many days live as long in the memory as the day she saw Tom Cruise on the high street. “I saw him a couple of years ago walking past Iceland,” she said. It may seem like a once-in-a-lifetime anecdote but, this week, Cruise was back – and, when the purpose for his visit was revealed, the chance sighting of the Mission: Impossible star in a West Sussex town makes a lot more sense. East Grinstead is home to the Church of Scientology – its Saint Hill Manor is the UK headquarters for the organisation. Last week, the church held its annual fundraising bash, the Patrons Ball, with Scientologists from the UK and beyond gathering under the same roof. They were greeted with a night of glitz and glamour, according to the videos taken on the night, including live performances, flowing wine and a flashy stage setup that could have been lifted straight from a primetime Saturday night entertainment show. According to the church, more than 7,000 people descended on the mansion – which was bought by L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, in 1959 – for the Patrons Ball. Not all of those in attendance were A-listers. The organisation said residents and “town and district councillors” were also on the guest list. A gathering of such size in a town with a population of just 26,000 is unlikely to go unnoticed. One report in the Sun newspaper said Cruise’s helicopter “caused a right old racket”, and local people this week were similarly struck by the size of the event. Paul Oliver, 53, and Vanessa Oliver, 54, were walking their dogs past the manor when they noticed a lot of traffic outside. “It seemed like quite a do. We went for a walk when they were setting up. We could hear them testing out the band,” said Paul. “They spent a few quid – their car park was massive.” East Grinstead, which has been called the UK’s Twin Peaks by various outlets, has a complicated relationship with the organisation. In the town centre, lined with magnificent Tudor buildings and quaint shops, 59-year-old Juchau said she is not a fan of Scientology’s presence. The Church of Scientology has faced controversy since its founding in 1954, including claims that it separates its members from their families and indoctrinates followers. Hubbard was banned from entering the UK by the British government in 1968. Kenneth Robinson, the health minister at the time, called Scientology “a potential menace to the personality and wellbeing of those so deluded as to become its followers”. The organisation’s current leader, David Miscavige, has been served with lawsuits in the US. Narconon UK, a Scientology-linked addiction charity, was accused last year of putting vulnerable people through psychological drills that left them “traumatised” and in “trance-like states”. The claims, revealed by the Observer, led to the charity being reprimanded by the Charity Commission. These controversies have had an impact locally. Critics of Scientology have regularly protested outside the organisation’s stately headquarters and, this year, a sign erected opposite East Grinstead railway station, which listed “Saint Hill Manor. Home of L Ron Hubbard” among the town’s historic sights, was removed by Govia Thameslink Railway. The company said it moved the sign because it was in an unsafe location. Juchau said Scientologists have been “putting their pamphlets in charity shops” since she moved to the town in 1998. A few months ago, she said she spotted them preaching on the bus to nearby Haywards Heath. “They get on … and give you their books,” she said. When this was put to the church, it said preaching on the bus “is just not something we do”. She said she often spots followers of the organisation around town, including outside Sainsbury’s, “wearing their black suits with the red tie”. Cruise, the most high-profile devotee of Scientology, has long been a regular in the town. He bought an 11,331sq ft mansion near Saint Hill Manor in 2006, before selling it to Peter Andre a decade later, though the Top Gun star is not the only celebrity with links to Scientology to have graced East Grinstead. In 2011, John Travolta was reportedly left hungry after his team called a local KFC branch to book a table before being told he would have to queue like everybody else. The worker who picked up the call on behalf of “Mr Travolta” told the Mirror at the time: “Customers are customers, no matter who they are.” On Thursday afternoon, the Guardian paid a brief visit to Saint Hill Manor, situated down a leafy, country road, but was informed that visits are appointment only.

Tanzania police arrest opposition party official after deadly election protests

Tanzanian authorities have detained a senior official from the main opposition party, Chadema, amid a spate of arrests in connection to deadly protests during elections last week. More than 1,000 people were killed by security forces during the demonstrations, according to Chadema and human rights bodies. The Tanzanian government has said these figures were exaggerated but did not give its own figures. Chadema said its deputy secretary general, Amani Golugwa, was arrested by police on Saturday. Authorities are seeking the arrest of nine more people, including others in the party. Tanzanian authorities have charged more than 200 people with treason after last week’s protests – a charge that could carry the death penalty, though no executions have been carried out in the country since 1995. The incumbent president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was deemed the winner of the election, with 98% of the vote, but the opposition – which was barred from participating – condemned the results as fraudulent. The government claimed the elections were free and fair, but the main rivals were not allowed to run, and election observers said the vote was not democratic and cited instances of ballot stuffing. “The police force, in collaboration with other defence and security agencies, is continuing a serious manhunt to find all who planned, coordinated and executed this evil act,” a police spokesperson said in a statement. Chadema’s secretary general, John Mnyika, and the head of communications, Brenda Rupia, were among those wanted for arrest. The leader of Chadema, Tundu Lissu, was charged with treason in April and not allowed to run in the elections. The exclusion of Lissu and other political figures from the ballot fuelled the ensuing protests. According to Amnesty International, in the run-up to the elections, Tanzanian authorities carried out enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings. Protests were held on 29 October in cities across Tanzania, leading to violence and clashes with police, a statement from authorities said. Amnesty International said authorities cut off internet access and used excessive force in an attempt to suppress post-election protests. Rights groups said the government had cracked down on individuals perceived to be associated with the protests, including the prominent businesswoman Jenifer Jovin, who was accused of encouraging protesters to buy gas masks. President Samia acknowledged that there were deaths, but blamed the unrest on foreigners, stating: “It was not a surprise that those arrested were from other countries.” Despite the protests, Samia was sworn into office on Monday. Her inauguration ceremony was televised but closed to the public and held at a military parade ground in the capital. Samia became Tanzania’s first female president in 2021 after the then president, John Magufuli, died in office while she was his vice-president. She was initially praised by activists for easing political repression, but has since been accused of reversing course.

UPS and FedEx ground all MD-11 planes after deadly Louisville crash

The freight companies UPS and FedEx have grounded their fleets of MD-11 aircraft days after a cargo plane crash that killed 14 people in Kentucky. The grounded MD-11s are the same type of plane involved in Tuesday’s crash at a UPS facility in Louisville. They were originally built by McDonnell Douglas until it was taken over by Boeing. UPS on Friday said the fleet had been temporarily grounded “out of an abundance of caution and in the interest of safety”. “The grounding is effective immediately. We made this decision proactively at the recommendation of the aircraft manufacturer,” the company said in a statement. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our employees and the communities we serve.” Meanwhile, FedEx said that it will be grounding the aircraft while the company conducts “a thorough safety review based on the recommendation of the manufacturer”. UPS and FedEx said the MD-11s make up about 9% and 4% of their fleets, respectively. “Contingency plans are in place to ensure we can continue to deliver the reliable service our customers around the world count on,” the UPS statement said. Western Global Airlines is the only other US cargo airline that flies MD-11s, according to the aviation analytics firm Cirium. The airline has 16 MD-11s in its fleet, but 12 of them have already been put in storage. The company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment outside of business hours early on Saturday. Fourteen people have been confirmed as having died in the crash in Louisville, including pilots Capt Richard Wartenberg, First Officer Lee Truitt and International Relief Officer Captain Dana Diamond. Officials have said they fear the death toll will grow, with as many as nine people reportedly missing after the crash. A federal investigator said the cargo plane’s left wing caught fire and an engine fell off shortly after it took off from the Louisville Muhammad Ali international airport, causing the plane to crash and explode into a fireball. “Our hearts go out to every UPSer who has been impacted and all in our Louisville community – supporting you and ensuring you receive the care and resources you need is our priority,” the company said in an earlier statement. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating the maintenance history of the plane, which was in Texas for repairs in the weeks before the crash. Reuters reported flight tracking data showing the plane was on the ground in San Antonio, Texas, from 3 September to 18 October. Flight records suggest the plane was undergoing maintenance at that time, though it was not clear what work was done. The cockpit voice recorder and data recorder were recovered, and the engine was found on the airfield. The cockpit voice recorder captured a bell sounding in the cockpit, a federal investigator said. The recorders – known as black boxes – were built to withstand crash impacts and intense heat from fires, and they appeared to be intact when located amid the crash debris. Investigators plan on reviewing data from the black boxes. The UPS facility where Tuesday’s crash occurred is the company’s largest package-handling hub. The facility employs more than 20,000 people in the region, handles 300 flights daily and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour. UPS Worldport operations resumed on Wednesday night with its next day air, or night sort, operation, spokesperson Jim Mayer said. Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting

‘For the women who gave birth in the dark’: a portrait of motherhood in Gaza

She used to worry about screen time. She used to fret over sugar. She used to dwell on what cartoon character might be the right one to put on her son’s next birthday cake. “I thought being a mother meant sleepless nights, picky eaters, school runs, messy rooms and too much laundry,” writes the author Diana Shams. “I used to think motherhood was hard.” That was before the start of the conflict that destroyed Gaza. More than 68,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians, and entire cities reduced to rubble by Israel’s offensive, which a UN inquiry found to be a genocide. During a truce in early 2025, Shams and her family returned to their home and began cleaning away rubble and repairing it. One of her friends abroad suggested she write a book about her experience as a mother. Her laptop was lost under the debris of her family home, so she wrote it on her phone. In her book A Different Kind of Motherhood, Shams, 27, tells the story of her life as a mother in the face of violence and near constant danger. “No one prepares you to raise children through sirens, smoke and screams. No one teaches you how to keep a child calm while the sky is falling. No one explains how to carry your baby through fire, hunger and fear – and still sing to her at bedtime,” she writes. Shams’ book does not provide responses to these unanswerable questions but instead offers her family’s experience, as well as that of other Palestinian mothers she knew, who were killed or lost their children. “I wrote this book not just for myself,” she writes, “but for every mother in Gaza who has rocked her baby while the ceiling shook. For the women who gave birth in shelters, in the dark, with no medicine. For the mothers who lost a child and kept living – because they had no choice. Because there were others to protect.” Life before the war was by no means normal for Shams and her small family. The besieged strip was widely known as the world’s biggest open-air prison. Despite the siege, she lived a life that, in many small details, was striving for normality. Shams and her husband lived with in-laws when her firstborn, Karim, arrived, but saved and borrowed their way to owning a home. They painted their new home in time for their second child, Rose, who was born in early 2023. Seven months later, one day into the latest war, they were forced to flee after a neighbour’s house was bombed. They moved repeatedly before finally making the journey south, sleeping in their car until a tent became available. They have been living in and out of tents ever since. “Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I thought about mothers in other countries – mothers abroad who raise their children in comfortable homes, who open a fridge full of cold water, who press a button and a fan or an air conditioner cools the room,” she writes. “Mothers who tuck their children into soft beds with clean sheets and watch them drift to sleep without fear”. Speaking by phone from Gaza, Shams says even the news reports people see cannot fully reflect what people in Gaza actually live through, especially mothers. “Who can understand what it means for my daughter Rose to take her first steps in mud and dirt?” she said. Shams did not intend to write a book, but had been collecting her thoughts by writing notes on her phone. “This book is not written in comfort. It is written in stolen moments between survival and grief, in the quiet hours when my children finally sleep, and I can let the weight of everything crash into me,” she writes in her book. Her father was a journalist and Shams found some comfort in documenting her daily life on TikTok as well – cooking over firewood, searching for baby milk and nappies, and showing her children playing in the sand. “One rainy night – I used to love the rain before the war – I nearly lost my mind when our tent flooded,” she said. “Everything was soaked and I was terrified my children would get sick. I found myself grabbing my phone and recording a video.” She was surprised when the video went viral and received great sympathy and supportive comments from western audiences. “I was touched by every word people wrote in support of me. That’s when I felt I had to be a voice for all the mothers in Gaza who have none,” she said. Social media has provided an outlet for some in Gaza but it was also a reminder of a cruel imbalance, as those facing death and destruction are able to see in real time people’s simpler lives nearby. “In other countries, mothers are worrying about homework, grades, screen time. They visit schools, choose tutors, plan university paths,” she writes in her book. “They post photos of ‘first day of school’ and decorate lunchboxes. Here, we are just hoping our children survive long enough to have a first day again.” A Different Kind of Motherhood by Diana Shams is available as an ebook.

Guyana in turmoil after opposition leader arrested and faces US extradition

Guyana has been thrown into political turmoil following the arrest and possible extradition to the United States of the country’s main opposition leader just two months after he emerged as the surprise contender in the presidential election that kept incumbent Irfaan Ali in power. Azruddin Mohamed, 38, and his father, Nazar Mohamed, 73, two of Guyana’s wealthiest figures thanks to their gold mining empire, were arrested on 31 October in the capital, Georgetown, in response to a formal extradition request from the US government. Facing 11 charges in a Florida court – including money laundering, bribery and tax evasion – they were released later the same day after posting bail of 150,000 Guyanese dollars each (about £547 or $719.95), but must report to the court weekly and will face a new hearing on Monday. Mohamed has claimed they are victims of political persecution by Ali’s government: “The government is fully behind the sanctions and has agents working in the US that they are in talks with,” he told local media. Mohabir Anil Nandlall, Guyana’s attorney general, said the case was a “legal obligation” arising from the country’s international commitments – a 1931 extradition treaty between the UK and the US remains in force in Guyana, which became independent from Britain in 1966. The case has become particularly emblematic at a time when relations between the Caribbean nation and the US have taken on new energy significance, with American companies leading the oil exploration that could soon make Guyana the world’s largest producer per capita. “It’s a situation where the status quo in Guyana is being challenged,” said Peter Wickham, a political scientist and director of a polling company in the Caribbean. Mohamed founded a party and announced his candidacy just three months before the presidential election, breaking with the country’s long-standing two-party system that has traditionally pitted the president’s PPP/C, broadly backed by the Indo-Guyanese population, against the APNU, generally supported by Afro-Guyanese voters. Mohamed urged Guyanese to reject “tribal voting” and, running on a populist, anti-establishment platform, promised to push for renegotiation of the oil deal – despite the country’s newly discovered oil wealth, more than half of its population still lives in poverty. “He hoped to become a kind of balance of power for whoever won the election, but the result ended up being better than he expected,” Wickham said. The incumbent Ali won, and his party secured 36 of the 65 seats in congress. But unlike in previous elections, it was not the APNU that emerged as the main opposition force – it won only 12 seats – but Mohamed’s party, with 16. Last Monday, three days after Mohamed was arrested and released on bail, he was sworn in alongside the rest of the new congress. He arrived in the Lamborghini at the centre of an alleged mail fraud case against him, in which he is accused of submitting a false $75,300 invoice for a vehicle said to have cost $680,000. Although the US extradition request was issued last October, the investigation into Mohamed and his father began earlier, and the indictment is said to cover offences committed between 2017 and 2024. In June 2024, a shipment containing about $5.3m in gold bars sent from Guyana by Mohamed’s Enterprise was seized at Miami international airport. That same month, the Mohameds were sanctioned by the US Department of Treasury on charges of gold smuggling, evading more than $50m in taxes owed to the Guyanese government and bribing local public officials. At a press conference last week, vice-president Bharrat Jagdeo – who led the country between 1999 and 2011 – said the extradition request came from Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state. “You see his signature there? ‘Marco Rubio,’” he said. “It’s not a junior man in Florida … that’s the seriousness [of it] … We are part of a treaty. We are part of an international community that believes people must pay for their crimes,” said Jagdeo. Mohamed and his lawyers declined to comment to the Guardian, but have previously denied wrongdoing. In addition to describing the case as political persecution, his legal team has told local media that some of the offences listed in the US indictment are not crimes in Guyana and therefore Mohamed should not be subject to extradition. The lawyers said they intend to challenge the case at every level, including the constitutional court and, ultimately, the Caribbean court of justice. Wickham said the case is likely to drag on. “While it goes on, he [Mohamed] remains a member of parliament … and I think he will continue to make life as difficult as he can for the government in his role as opposition leader,” he said.

Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight

Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world. The detainees have included at least two civilians held for months without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men. The two men were transferred to the subterranean Rakefet complex in January, and described regular beatings and violence consistent with well-documented torture in other Israeli detention centres. Rakefet prison was opened in the early 1980s to house a handful of the most dangerous organised crime figures in Israel but closed a few years later on the grounds that it was inhumane. The far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered it back into service after the 7 October attacks in 2023. The cells, a tiny exercise “yard” and a lawyers’ meeting room are all underground, so inmates live without any natural light. The jail was initially designed for a small number of high-security inmates occupying individual cells, holding 15 men when it shut in 1985. In recent months, about 100 detainees have been incarcerated there, official data obtained by PCATI shows. Under the ceasefire agreed in mid-October, Israel released 250 Palestinian prisoners who had been convicted in Israeli courts, and 1,700 Palestinian detainees from Gaza who had been held indefinitely without charge or trial. The young trader held at Rakefet was among them. However, the scale of detentions has been so vast that even after that mass release, at least 1,000 others are still held by Israel under the same conditions, including the nurse represented by PCATI. “Though the war is officially over, [Palestinians from Gaza] are still imprisoned under legally contested and violent wartime conditions that violate international humanitarian law and amount to torture,” PCATI said. The two men who met PCATI lawyers in September were a 34-year-old nurse detained while at work in a hospital in December 2023 and a young trader seized in October 2024 as he passed through an Israeli checkpoint. “In the cases of the clients we visited, we are speaking about civilians,” said the PCATI lawyer Janan Abdu. “The man I spoke to was an 18-year-old who worked selling food. He was taken from a checkpoint on a road.” Ben-Gvir had told Israeli media and a member of parliament that Rakefet was being rehabilitated to hold Nukhba – meaning “elite” – Hamas fighters who led massacres inside Israel Oct 7th, and Hezbollah special forces fighters captured in Lebanon. Israeli officials said no Palestinians involved in the 2023 attacks were released under the ceasefire deal that resulted in the teenage prisoner being returned to Gaza. The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) did not respond to questions about the status and identity of other prisoners held at Rakefet, which means “cyclamen flower” in Hebrew. Classified Israeli data indicates the majority of Palestinians taken prisoner in Gaza during the war were civilians. Israel’s supreme court ruled in 2019 that it was lawful to hold the bodies of Palestinians as bargaining chips for future negotiations, and rights groups have accused it of doing the same with living detainees from Gaza. Unique abuse Conditions for Palestinians were “horrific by intention” at all prisons, said Tal Steiner, the executive director of PCATI. Current and former detainees, and whistleblowers from the Israeli military, have all detailed systemic violations of international law. However, Rakefet imposes a unique form of abuse. Holding people below ground without daylight for months on end has “extreme implications” for psychological health, Steiner said. “It’s very hard to remain intact when you are held in such oppressive and difficult conditions.” It also affects physical health, impairing basic biological functions from circadian rhythms needed for sleep to vitamin D production. Despite working as a human rights lawyer, and visiting prisons at the complex in Ramla, south-east of Tel Aviv, where Rakefet is located, Steiner had not heard of the underground jail before Ben-Gvir ordered it back into service. It was closed before PCATI was founded, so the legal team turned to old media archives and the memoir of Rafael Suissa, the head of the IPS in the mid-1980s to find out more about the jail. “[Suissa] wrote that he understood being held below ground 24/7 is just too cruel, too inhumane for any person to endure, regardless of what their actions have been,” Steiner said. This summer, PCATI lawyers were asked to represent two men held in the underground prison, so Abdu and a colleague were able to visit for the first time. They were led underground by masked, heavily armed security guards, down a flight of dirty stairs into a room where the remains of dead insects dotted the floor. The toilet was so dirty it was in effect unusable. Surveillance cameras on the walls violated the basic legal right to a confidential discussion, and guards warned that the meeting would be cut short if they talked about detainees’ families or the war in Gaza. “I asked myself, if the conditions in the lawyers’ room are so humiliating – not just personally to us but also to the profession – then what is the situation for the prisoners?” Abdu said. “The answer came soon, when we met them.” The clients were brought in bent over, with guards forcing their heads to the ground, and remained shackled at their hands and feet, she said. Saja Misherqi Baransi, the second PCATI lawyer on the trip, said the two detainees had been in Rakefet for nine months, and the nurse began the meeting by asking: “Where am I and why am I here?” The guards had not told him the name of the prison. Israeli judges who authorised the detention of the men at very brief video hearings, during which the detainees had no lawyer and did not hear evidence against them, said only that they would be there “until the war ends”. The men described windowless cells with no ventilation, holding three or four detainees, and reported often feeling breathless and choking. Prisoners told the lawyers they faced regular physical abuse including beatings, assaults by dogs with iron muzzles, and guards stepping on prisoners, in addition to being denied adequate medical care and given starvation-level rations. Israel’s high court ruled this month that the state was depriving Palestinian prisoners of adequate food. They have very limited time outside the cell in a tiny underground enclosure, sometimes just five minutes every other day. Mattresses are taken away early in the morning, usually at about 4am, and only returned late at night, leaving detainees on iron frames in otherwise empty cells. Their descriptions matched images from a televised visit to the prison made by Ben-Gvir to publicise his decision to reopen the underground jail. “This is terrorists’ natural place, under the ground,” he said. He has repeatedly boasted about mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, rhetoric that former hostages taken during the 7 October attacks say prompted an escalation of Hamas abuse when they were in captivity. This included holding hostages in underground tunnels for months, depriving them of food, isolating them from news of relatives and the outside world, and violence and psychological torture, including being ordered to dig a grave on camera. Israel’s intelligence services have warned that the treatment of Palestinian prisoners puts the country’s wider security interests at risk. Misherqi Baransi said the detained nurse last saw daylight on 21 January this year, when he was transferred to Rakefet, after a year passing through other jails including the military’s notorious Sde Teiman centre. The nurse, a father of three, has had no news of his family since his detention. The only fragment of personal information lawyers can share with detainees from Gaza is the name of the relative who authorised them to take on the case. “When I told him: ‘I talked to your mother and she authorised me to meet you,’ then I am giving him this tiny thing, at least telling him that his mother is alive,” Misherqi Baransi said. When the other detainee asked Abdu if his pregnant wife had given birth safely, the guard immediately cut off the conversation to threaten him. As the guards took the men away, she heard the sound of an elevator, suggesting their cells were even deeper underground. The teenager had told her: “You are the first person I have seen since my arrest,” and his last request to her was: “Please come see me again.” His lawyers were later informed he was released to Gaza on 13 October. The IPS said in a statement that it “operates in accordance with the law and under the supervision of official comptrollers” and added that it “is not responsible for the legal process, classification of detainees, arrest policy, or arrests”. The justice ministry referred questions about Rakefet and detainees to the Israeli military. The military referred questions to the IPS. • This article was amended on 8 November 2025. Information provided to the Guardian meant an earlier version suggested both Rakefet detainees represented by PCATI were still in Israeli custody. PCATI provided new information after publication to say one of them had been released under the October ceasefire agreement.

Death of Iranian activist who burned picture of supreme leader causes outcry

The death of a young Iranian man who had filmed himself burning a photograph of the country’s supreme leader has sparked a war of words between state media and activists over how he died. Government-sanctioned news websites reported that Omid Sarlak, who was in his 20s, had been found in his car on Saturday in western Iran with a gunshot wound to his head and traces of gunpowder on his hands. Iranian police said Sarlak had “died by suicide”. But anti-government media and activists say the timing of the death, so soon after he made a public outcry against the government, raises suspicions about whether he was killed for his views. Hours before Sarlak’s body was found, a video posted on his social media account showed him burning the photo of the Islamic Republic’s leader, Ali Khamenei. The furore presents a threat to the regime, with Sarlak becoming an icon for activists, many of whom have followed him by burning Khamenei’s photo in solidarity and posting the videos online. Suspicions have grown after a widely circulated video showed Sarlak’s father reportedly saying at the site of his son’s death: “They killed my champion here.” An off-screen voice in the same clip was heard saying he was “surrounded and shot”. Later, in a televised interview aired by state media, Sarlak’s father requested people to “not pay attention to what’s circulating on social media and to let the judicial authorities handle the matter”. Activists have called the video forced and said the family was under surveillance. Hundreds of mourners who attended Sarlak’s funeral on Monday demonstrated and chanted slogans such as “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei”. In the clip shared on Instagram by Sarlak hours before his death, a recording is audible in the background of a speech by Iran’s former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1979, Pahlavi fled Iran, with the Islamic government taking power the same year. Some anti-government activists are nostalgic for the monarchy. On another one of his last Instagram stories, he wrote: “How long should we endure humiliation, poverty and being ridden over? This is the moment to show yourself, young people. These clerics are nothing but a stream for Iran’s youth to cross.” Sarlak was a student of aviation and an amateur boxer who was a fan of the Iranian wrestler Ebrahim Eshaghi. Eshaghi told the Guardian Sarlak had contacted him on Instagram shortly before he died. “He sent me a message that his life was in danger and that if anything were to happen to him, we should be his voice.” Eshaghi, who lives in Germany, said that since his death several of Sarlak’s close friends said they believed he had been killed by the intelligence services. “He loved life and had an upcoming boxing competition in two weeks. He loved the Pahlavi family and supported them. The regime also imprisons or kills young, athletic people, something it has been doing for years.” Sarlak’s death has reignited some of the same pain and outrage that emerged after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, a Kurdish woman who was arrested by the country’s “morality police” and died in custody in 2022, igniting huge, countrywide protests. Bahar Ghandehari, director of advocacy at the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, said it was notable that people inside Iran were burning photos publicly, “despite the fact that insulting or burning the supreme leader’s photo is considered a serious offence, carrying grave risks of arrest, imprisonment, harsh sentences, torture and even death”. In one video shared with the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, two men burned images of Khamenei, saying: “We burn this photo for justice, for freedom, for hope. I am Omid Sarlak. Death to Khamenei and long live the shah.” The editor of the Amirkabir Newsletter, an Iranian student movement website, said so far students have not held any protests in universities over Sarlak’s death “because the atmosphere on campuses remains heavily securitised”. The editor, who has no public profile to protect them and their staff while operating inside Iran, said they believed there would be “serious protests” this year or early next year. “Day by day, people’s anger over the killing of thousands of innocent people is growing, and they are distressed and upset,” they said. Separately, Reza Pahlavi, the exiled oldest son of the former shah has called Sarlak a hero and a brave soul who stood against the “oppression of the Islamic Republic and sacrificed his life for Iran’s freedom”.