Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late shah of Iran, has been found dead of an apparent suicide in the U.S. city of Boston.
Authorities in Boston said on January 4 that Pahlavi, 44, had died from a single gunshot wound that was apparently self-inflicted.
Reza Pahlavi, the shah's oldest son, said on his website that Alireza Pahlavi had struggled for years to overcome depression over the fate of Iran under the Islamic regime, and over the deaths of his father and sister.
"Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life," the statement said.
Alireza Pahlavi, the second child of the shah, was born in April 1966 in Tehran. He studied ancient Iranian studies and philology at Harvard University.
His suicide comes 10 years after the death of his sister, the shah's youngest child, Leila Pahlavi, in a London hotel from a reported overdose of sleeping pills.
She was 31 years old and had also been suffering from depression.
Alireza Pahlavi's father, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and fled Iran, dying in Egypt a year later.
Following his death, his family resettled in the United States and France.
with agency reports