After her teenage daughter was shot dead in Iran's protests, Samira fled the country and now names those she blames

Samira worked in cosmetics sales in Iran. In January, during the protests that engulfed the country, her only child, 16-year-old Sevda, was shot dead in front of her by Iranian security forces. Speaking to BBC Panorama, Samira said finding her daughter's body was not the end of her ordeal but the beginning of harassment by the authorities.

Sevda was killed on 9 January as she and her mother took part in huge demonstrations on the outskirts of the capital, Tehran. The protests had begun the previous month, sparked by economic discontent, before escalating into calls for an end to the Islamic Republic.

Samira said Sevda was politically aware. Her daughter's idols were two other young women: Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody after an alleged violation of the mandatory headscarf rules triggered mass protests, and Nika Shakarami, who was killed during a subsequent uprising against Iran's strict Islamic dress code for women. Samira said Sevda kept them alive in her thoughts and wanted to continue their path of resistance.

The day before Sevda was killed, protest numbers had been particularly high. Samira said she and Sevda had responded to a call for demonstrations by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last shah. She said the security forces had lost control that day, and that the government, spooked by the crowds, announced a shoot-to-kill order the following day — which she had dismissed as an empty threat.

Samira said they had also been reassured by a promise from US President Donald Trump. On 8 January he told US media he had let the Iranian authorities know that if they started killing people, the United States would hit them very hard. Nevertheless, the crowds on 9 January appeared smaller, Samira said.

Sevda seemed to know the risks. Samira said her daughter took off her earrings and gave them to her grandmother, and shared her phone passcode with her mother. Mother and daughter gathered with the other protesters, and Sevda stood on a dustbin and began leading a chant.

In Samira's account, there seemed to be more forces than people in the area, with Basij and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces gathered in large numbers within a day. A sniper fired from the roof of a building on their right; the bullet went through Sevda's heart. Blood was coming from her mouth and nose, Samira said, but her daughter's eyes were still looking at her.

Samira got Sevda to hospital and was told doctors were operating on her, but then a door opened and she saw her daughter zipped into a body bag. The body was taken away, and it took Samira days to find her again at one of Tehran's largest morgues, among the bodies of many teenagers. She finally found Sevda with three bodies piled on top of her.

Iranian authorities acknowledge that more than 3,000 people were killed in the protests, but claim some were members of the security forces. The human rights group Hrana, however, estimates the number of dead at more than 7,000, most of them protesters.

Samira said that to be allowed to take the body away for burial, she was forced to say that "terrorists", rather than the security forces, had been responsible for Sevda's death. She said families were silenced this way to hide how many people were killed on 8 and 9 January. Even so, she says she was barred from visiting the grave and from organising a tombstone. A few days before the ceremony marking 40 days since Sevda's death, she says she was summoned by a local branch of the Ministry of Intelligence and offered perks and a house if she gave an interview saying Sevda was a Basiji killed by protesters, so she could be declared a martyr.

As soon as the 40th day was over, Samira fled Iran, crossing rivers and mountains with the help of people smugglers, saying she did not want to trade with her child's blood. After she continued giving interviews to foreign media from abroad, she was charged in absentia with a string of offences, including "moharebeh" — waging war against God — which can carry the death penalty. A vigil held by relatives and friends for what would have been Sevda's 17th birthday was raided, she says, with some arrested by the IRGC, and her family was warned that if gatherings at the grave continued, the body would be exhumed and moved elsewhere.

Now living abroad in hiding, Samira publishes online the names of security force members and officials she believes were responsible for firing fatal shots during the 8 and 9 January protests, saying she wants each of them identified and put on trial. After one man she named was later found dead, a regime supporter offered a $5,000 (£3,732) reward for information about her whereabouts; Iranian state media has since reported the arrest of nine people in connection with that death. The Iranian embassy in London told Panorama that peaceful and legitimate protests had been hijacked by foreign powers, including the US, which promoted violence and compromised public security.