The youngest son of the late shah of Iran was found dead of an apparent suicide at his home in Boston, after he had “struggled for years to overcome his sorrow,” his brother said.
Alireza Pahlavi, 44, died from a gunshot wound that apparently was self-inflicted, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.
“Once again, we are joined with mothers, father and relatives of so many victims of these dark times for our country,” the shah’s oldest son, Reza Pahlavi, wrote on his Web site in announcing the death of his brother.
Police said officers responding to an emergency call found the man dead in his home in the city’s South End neighborhood shortly after 2am on Tuesday. A police spokesman did not know who made the call or whether it came from the home.
Fardia Pars, who is close to Reza Pahlavi, said by phone from Paris that Alireza Pahlavi went into a deep depression following the 2001 death of his sister Leila Pahlavi, who was found in a London hotel room at age 31 after overdosing on barbiturates.
Alireza Pahlavi never recovered, Pars said.
“He became a different person,” he said.
Pahlavi’s depression “grew over time — his departure from Iran, living in exile, the death of his father and then his sister to whom he was very close,” said Nazie Eftekhari, who works in Reza Pahlavi’s office in Washington and is a close family friend.
“The deaths were a huge blow to him,” she said.
When Leila Pahlavi died, her mother said her daughter had been “very depressed.” Her doctor had said she had a history of anorexia, bulimia and psychological problems.
Former shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution. He fled Iran and wandered from country to country, ill with cancer, and eventually died in Egypt in 1980.
Alireza Pahlavi was born in Tehran in 1966 and attended school there until 1979, according to a brief biographical sketch on the Web site of his mother, the former empress Farah Pahlavi.
From 1979 to 1981, Alireza Pahlavi attended schools in New York and Cairo, and from 1981 to 1984 he attended Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Pahlavi studied music as an undergraduate at Princeton University and ancient Iranian studies as a graduate student at Columbia University.
He also did postgraduate work at Harvard University in ancient Iranian studies and philology. He was not studying at the university at the time of his death, a Harvard spokesman said on Tuesday.
Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement that “the Iranian-American community was deeply saddened” by news of the death.
“There are many divisions in the community, but on a day like this, I think we are all united in our sympathy with the Pahlavi family for their tragic and painful loss,” Parsi said.
In Iran, the Web site of state-run Press TV carried a factual account of the apparent suicide under the headline: “Son of ex-dictator of Iran kills himself.”
Reza Pahlavi, who property tax records show lives in Potomac, Maryland, has spoken out in opposition to Iran’s clerical regime. It’s not clear how much weight exiled opposition forces have inside Iran nor how many Iranians support the idea of a return to the monarchy. Pahlavi said in 2009 that that is not his goal.
“I’m not here to advocate anything but ... freedom and democracy for the Iranian people at first, and I’ve determined this as my unique mission in life,” he said at the time.
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