Iranian’s Death Suicide, Not Lynching

Police concluded Thursday that an Iranian-born University of Idaho student, found hanged from a tree Tuesday with his hands tied behind his back, committed suicide.

The announcement was a relief to people around town and at the university, who were hoping that the death on campus was not a racially motivated lynching.

The victim, Sharon Andrew Akhavan, 21, was dark-skinned. The Aryan Nation, a white supremacist group, is headquartered in Hayden Lake, Ida., about 130 miles north of here. It and other neo-Nazi organizations hold well-publicized annual gatherings in the state that Idahoans say give the state an unsavory and unearned reputation.

Akhavan, a junior majoring in architecture, recently had been depressed over his grades and discussed suicide with friends, police said. “He left a note in his room in which he gave his possessions to various friends,” Moscow Police Chief David Cameron said.

The specter of a lynching was heightened because Akhavan’s hands were tied behind his back with bailing twine. But the evidence indicated that Akhavan was in fact a suicide, police said.

“It’s humanly possible to do that (hang one’s self with hands tied behind the back),” Cameron said.