Iranian media reported recently that a notorious criminal who fought with IRGC forces in Syria in 2018 was hospitalized after being shot by a rival gang in Tehran.

An official of the Greater Tehran Police told Etemad Online on January 10 that the three men responsible for shooting Hani Kordeh (a nickname) a day earlier were arrested at their hideout and promised further information later.

Iranian newspapers claim Hani Kordeh, whose real name is not mentioned anywhere in the media, has close ties with some high-profile politicians, officials, and a former coach of Esteghlal FC. There have been allegations that he has collaborated with Iran's security and intelligence bodies for years.

In 2018, Hani Kordeh posted videos of himself on Instagram suggesting that he was involved in the fight against Bishar al-Assad’s opposition in Syria alongside IRGC forces.

In one of the videos that showed him in Syria, he appears with a group of IRGC soldiers with a rifle on his shoulder bragging and vowing to crush the enemy. In other videos he is shown visiting a Shiite shrine in Damascus. Fighting in Syria allowed him to call himself a “Defender of the Shrine”, a misleading title reserved for the forces that were sent to Syria.

The tens of thousands of Iranian, Afghan and other forces that the IRGC deployed in Syria were simply there to save the country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, not to defend any shrine.

Omid Shams, a UK-based human rights lawyer, believes the publication of these images was a form of propaganda for the IRGC forces which were sustaining heavy casualties in Syria but confirmed the statements of Brigadier General Hossein Hamdani in 2015 about the recruitment of criminals and thugs into the IRGC's combat ranks in 2009.

Hamedani who was head of the IRGC's Rassoulollah Corps in charge of Greater Tehran from November 2009 until January 2014, admitted in an interview that in 2009 he had recruited 5,000 “apolitical” violent criminals and organized them in three battalions to suppress the Green Movement protests following the disputed presidential election that brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

The opposition has for many years alleged that the IRGC employs the services of thugs and hooligans to quell anti-government protests. Shams and some other Iran experts also believe that the Fatehin Brigade, the first of the IRGC’s Basij volunteer forces to be sent to Syria to fight alongside Assad forces under the command of the extraterritorial Quds Force, must have been the IRGC unit Hamedani used to organize thugs in 2009.

“These [videos] also proved that the main force, which recruits criminals and thugs is Fatehin (Conquerors) Special Forces has specifically been active in deadly suppression of popular protests, both in Iran and in Syria. The role of this unit in suppressing the recent [Woman, Life, Freedom] protests was confirmed after Ebrahim Raisi’s meeting with Fatehin forces,” Shams wrote in December 2022.

Hamedani who was killed in Syria in October 2015 was twice decorated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and promoted to major general posthumously. He was subjected to international sanctions in April 2011, including by Britain, the European Union, the United States and Canada for human rights violations.

Hani Kordeh is said to have been born in 1980s in Hamedan in western Iran and spent sixteen years of his life in prison since the age of fourteen. He has been wounded in gang fights several times including in 2019 when he was critically stabbed nearly fatally by the leader of a rival gang in Tehran and his hospitalization made headlines.

The notorious man who many including police officials often refer to as a thug and ruffian has been well known for many years for his criminal activities including extortion, organizing as well as leading football thugs and numerous violent gangland wars. His source of income is not clear, but in social media posts he often appears on the streets of the capital driving an expensive Porsche.

He has also claimed on various occasions that he runs a drug rehabilitation facility in the south of Tehran.