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By Root 389 0

and I saw Basij members on the rooftop of the base firing warning shots into the air. They were trapped in the building, surrounded by youths who were pelting them with Molotov cocktails. I later learned from several intelligence officials that an opposition group, the MKO, had most likely organized the attack on the Basij. The MKO (Mujahideen Khalq Organization) is a cultlike Marxist-Islamist group that has been based in Iraq for the past three decades; its goal is to get rid of the Iranian regime. Its sympathizers had acted as agents provocateurs among the protestors, inciting violence; they continued to do so throughout the day. I kept filming as the MKO members and young people instigated by the MKO eventually brought down the fence around the Basij base. Before long, the Basijis stopped firing warning shots and began shooting indiscriminately into the crowd of protestors. The two Basijis on the roof did not seem to care if the people they were shooting at were attackers or passersby. Many peaceful demonstrators in the crowd panicked and started to throw stones at the compound.

The Basij responded by shooting at the young men who’d jumped over the fallen fence and were running toward the building. One man in his early twenties was shot as he tried to leap over the fence. The sharp ends of the collapsed fence looked like the tridents used by gladiators in ancient Rome. The boy’s slim body dropped onto the fence as soon as the bullet entered his body. He went into cardiac arrest and slowly rolled over onto the ground. I recorded the young man’s climb and fall. Horrified to have filmed a man’s death, I couldn’t move until the Basijis started to spray bullets in my direction. Then I went behind a wall and held the camera outside, looking at the scene through the monitor. Another young man was shot in the head while trying to kick down the door of the base. People raised his body and took it toward the main street. “Mikosham an keh baradaram kosht,” they chanted, their voices filled with rage. “I kill those who killed my brother.”

Some young men in the crowd stopped attacking the base and carried the boy’s body to the hospital at the end of the street, a block away from where the peaceful main demonstration was still under way. But they understood that their efforts were futile. He was already dead. As I filmed the men carrying the body with my video camera raised in the air, I felt paralyzed, utterly helpless. My country was on fire, and all I could do was film.

As the Basij started to spread bullets into the crowd, as people scrambled to take cover, as bloodied people ran out of the street, and as MKO supporters started to chant, “Death to the Islamic Republic,” I continued to film.

“Hush. Be quiet! Change the slogan! Allahu akbar! God is great!” screamed a couple of older men trying to get the crowd out of the street. “We haven’t come here to say, ‘Death to the Islamic Republic.’ ”

“We’re here to support Mousavi,” said another woman. “Not fight!”

A small group of young men approached a few of the older men who were trying to calm people down. “Khafeh shin madar saga!” one said, throwing punches at an older man. “Shut up, you sons of bitches!” The crowd erupted into a brawl.

“Death to Khamenei!” cried a teenager as he joined the others hitting the older men. I turned my camera toward him.

“Nagir! Nagir! Don’t film!” He grabbed at my video camera, but I shoved it under my arm and quickly sidestepped away from him. With my back against the wall of a building, I slid my body away from the crowd. An older couple blocked others from getting at me, helping me escape.

“Get out as soon as you can,” an old woman told me.

When I broke free from the crowd, I ran as fast and as far as I could and hailed the first motorcycle I saw. I wanted to edit the footage immediately, to show the world what was happening in Tehran. I knew that I had the only professionally filmed footage of the Basij shooting.

I told the motorcycle driver to take me to the Laleh Hotel, in the city center, where I knew Lindsey Hilsum, a reporter for the