BOSTON, (Reuters) – Prince Alireza Pahlavi, younger son of the late Shah of Iran, committed suicide yesterday in Boston, according to his brother.
“It is with immense grief that we would like to inform our compatriots of the passing away of Prince Alireza Pahlavi,” Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s older son, said on his website, rezapahlavi.org.
Pahlavi, 44, took his life early yesterday at his Boston home “plunging his family and friends into great sorrow,” the note said.
It said he struggled for years to overcome depression over the fate of Iran and the loss of his father and sister.
Boston police were investigating a suspected suicide that occurred shortly after 2 a.m. local time. Boston media reported that Pahlavi shot himself in his apartment in the city’s South End neighbourhood.
The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and died in Egypt a year later. His daughter Leila died in a London hotel room in 2001 of a drug overdose.