Mahmoudzadeh

Case story · Updated November 2026

The aid worker from Virginia who went back to help

Friends called him Chicho. Omer Mahmoudzadeh was born in Mahabad, in Iran's Kurdish region, and made his life in Northern Virginia, where he raised a family. His wife, Shiwa, became a U.S. citizen in 2008; their daughter, Tara, was born there in 2002.

In his later years Omer went back to the region he came from. He volunteered with refugees in the camps around Koya, a town in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq that has sheltered Iranian Kurds who fled across the border.

Background: what is "Woman, Life, Freedom"?

On September 13, 2022, Iran's morality police arrested Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from the town of Saqqez, in Tehran for allegedly failing to wear her headscarf properly. She died in custody on September 16. Her family and witnesses said she had been beaten; the authorities denied it.

Protests began at her funeral in Saqqez and spread within days to cities across Iran. Women pulled off their headscarves in the streets, and crowds took up the Kurdish slogan "Jin, Jiyan, Azadî," in Persian "Zan, Zendegi, Azadi": Woman, Life, Freedom. Led largely by women and young people, it became the broadest challenge to Iran's rulers in decades.

The government answered with force. A United Nations fact-finding mission later reported that at least 551 protesters were killed by security forces, among them 49 women and 68 children, and concluded in March 2024 that the crackdown amounted to crimes against humanity.

Why Iran turned its missiles on refugee camps in Iraq

Iran's Kurdish provinces were at the heart of the uprising. Rather than acknowledge the anger at home, Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed Kurdish opposition parties, which have operated in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan since the 1980s, for stirring up the unrest.

Beginning on September 24, 2022, the Guards struck Kurdish sites across the border. On the morning of September 28 they fired dozens of ballistic missiles and drones from inside Iran at the camps and party offices around Koya. At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 wounded, among them schoolchildren.

Omer was among the dead. He was 59. The U.S. State Department confirmed that an American had been killed, and the White House condemned the strikes as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.

A family's search for accountability

There was no path to justice in Iran. But U.S. law allows Americans harmed by a country the State Department has designated a state sponsor of terrorism, a list Iran has been on since 1984, to sue that country in federal court. In 2023, Shiwa and Tara brought their case in Washington. Iran was formally notified of the lawsuit and never responded.

In April 2025, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ruled that Iran and the Revolutionary Guards were responsible for Omer's death. She called the attack a horrific act of terrorism and entered judgment for his family. For Shiwa and Tara, the ruling is a public record, from an American court, of what happened to him.

Why this case matters

An American killed by an Iranian missile and drone strike. To the firm's knowledge, this is the first case in which a U.S. court has held Iran liable for killing an American citizen in a missile and drone attack.

Terrorism across a border. The strikes were launched from inside Iran at refugee camps in another country. The ruling recognizes that Iran's responsibility does not stop at its own borders, and that civilians sheltering abroad are protected too.

A war on the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement. Omer was killed in the first weeks of the uprising, by forces that blamed Kurds for a movement that began at a Kurdish woman's funeral. His death shows that the crackdown reached far beyond Iran's streets, to refugees and aid workers in a neighboring country.

Disclosure: Herischi Law represents the Mahmoudzadeh family in Nahadi et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran (D.D.C.). Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.