Son of deposed Shah of Iran commits suicide

The youngest son of the former Shah of Iran has died of suicide. Forty-four year-old Ali Reza Pahlavi reportedly shot himself in the head Tuesday at his Boston home. He was 13 years old in 1979 when his father was overthrown in what became Iran's Islamic Revolution.

Ali Reza Pahlavi is the second of the Shah's children to die in an apparent suicide. The Shah's daughter Leila was found dead of a drug overdose in London nearly ten years ago at age 31.

The Shah's oldest son Reza Pahlavi arrived in Boston today and fought back tears as he talked about the tragic consequences of depression. The Shah's wife Farah Pahlavi was expected in Boston from Paris today.

News of the death carried the headline in the official Iranian News Agency "Son of ex-dictator of Iran kills himself."

Boston police said officers responding to a 911 call found the man dead in his home in the city's South End neighborhood shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday. Reza Pahlavi says his brother left wishes that his body be cremated and his remains released in the Caspian Sea.

"We mourn today, the succumbing of our beloved Ali Reza to the weight, pain and daily burdens of this grave illness," Reza said in a news conference in Boston. "My family has had its share of dealing with this debilitating illness," Pahlavi said. He choked up as he read the statement. "But we also realize it is not a tragedy isolated to us; we share this with the millions around the world, particularly those in our homeland Iran suffering from the same."

The Shah had four children. Reza Pahlavi lives in Washington DC with his family. Alireza Pahlavi was born in Tehran in 1966 and attended school there until 1979. He went to college at Princeton and Columbia and did some post-graduate work at Harvard. Family friends say he was stricken following the death of his sister Leila.

The Shah was deposed in the revolution and died of cancer in 1980, isolated in Egypt. Several other countries refused to allow him entry.

Students in Iran took over the US embassy and held captives hostage for over a year following the Shah's arrival in the U.S. to receive cancer treatment. The hostage situation led the nightly newscasts in the U.S., and the ongoing crisis helped lead to the fall of the Carter administration and the election of Ronald Reagan.

The overthrow of the Shah followed years of repression and strong-arm tactics by the secret police inside Iran. It paved the way for what many inside and outside the country now say is a far more repressive and authoritarian government. Most Iranian families living in Los Angeles today came to the US following the 1979 revolution.

The US backed monarchy returned to power in 1953, following a CIA-instigated coup to overthrow the democratically-elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh.