TEHRAN -- Iranian people, officials and
religious figures on Friday attended the funeral of Johnny Bet Oshana, an Assyrian Christian martyr whose remains have been found 38 years after the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
The martyr had been identified through DNA testing on his remains and was brought back to the homeland from the Iraqi soil.
Bet Oshana was martyred east of Iraq’s Tigris River in March 1985, but his body had since remained there and gone missing.
A farewell ceremony was held at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran on Wednesday evening. On Friday, an Assyrian Christian church in Tehran held a special ceremony for the martyr and his remains were taken to Islamshahr, south of the capital, for burial.