The mother of 16-year-old protester Nika Shahkarami, who was discovered dead in Tehran last month, claims that her daughter was slain by Iranian security forces during a demonstration.

Nasrin Shahkarami, Shahkarami’s mother, refuted official explanations that her daughter fell off a roof in interviews with the Iranian newspaper Etemad and a video message broadcast by US-funded Radio Farda.

Based on an interview with the independent Iranian website Etemad, Nasrin Shahkarami stated, “It’s obvious that my daughter was at the protests and killed there.” On Tuesday, Etemad pulled the interview from its website.

The passing of Nika Shahkarami coincides with continuous nationwide protests against a government that is alleged to be corrupt and to have quashed opposition by way of arbitrary detentions and even mass murders.

The death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who passed away after being arrested by morality police in September, was the initial event that sparked the protests.

Closed circuit TV footage appeared to show Nika Shahkarami accessing a building in Tehran on September 21, according to the Iranian government, and authorities publicly decided that she perished after dropping from the top of a building.

But Nasrin Shahkarami disputes those reports. In the Radio Farda video, she claimed that her daughter’s body only sustained brain injuries and the rest of it was in decent shape.

She also disputed the identity of the child seen on the CCTV footage entering the building as being her daughter.

“There is no way to establish this is Nika. The female is wearing a mask, and it’s unclear what can be made out in these pictures, but a shadow was captured on the camera. This isn’t Nika, in my opinion,” Shahkarami told Etemad.

According to Nika Shahkarami’s mother, who has confirmed that her daughter is visible in social media footage of a protest, she vanished after participating in one in Tehran.

Nasrin Shahkarami informed Etemad, “I saw this video and the little girl in the video is Nika. According to Shahkarami, the police showed her pictures of her daughter’s body at the Kahrizak morgue nine days after she vanished.