Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral on Monday of 19-year-old Sohrab Aarabi, whose body was returned to his family after nearly a month of frantic searching by friends and relatives. He had disappeared on June 15 during a protest against the disputed re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“I won’t remain silent,” said Aarabi’s mother, Parvin Fahimi, according to pro-reformist website Norooznews.org, the online incarnation of the popular newspaper Norooz, which was closed by authorities in 2002. “The authorities were playing with me all this time,” she added. “My son had been killed, but they refused to tell me.”

The story of Aarabi’s death and his mother’s quest is emerging as another emotionally potent narrative of the fledgling protest movement. It follows that of Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old shot dead on June 20 during a demonstration, who has also become a symbol of the movement.

Aarabi’s relatives described him as a sometimes sullen and sensitive young man, the youngest of four brothers, who fell a year behind in his studies while stoically attending to his ailing father. The senior Aarabi died two years ago after a long illness, said Bahman Mohammadi, his paternal uncle, who lives in Aachen, Germany. “He had his own spirit, very emotional,” Mohammadi said.

Aarabi was to begin college in the fall but disappeared on June 15, the day of the first large demonstration against Ahmadinejad, who is accused by opposition candidates of vote-rigging in the June 12 presidential election.

Public outrage over the teenager’s death has been fuelled by accounts of his mother’s ordeal in looking for her son. In a video posted online, Fahimi is seen clutching his photo outside Evin Prison, where authorities had told her that he was probably being held. On the video, she pleads for information about Aarabi.

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