Strangled, snatched from hospital beds and tortured: Horrific new claims expose Iran’s deadly protest crackdown

This article first appeared on our partner site, Independent Persian

As the number of citizens raising their voice against the regime continues to grow in the ongoing Iranian national revolution, numerous reports reaching Independent Persian from cities across Iran point to an unprecedented deterioration in the treatment and condition of detainees.

These accounts detail widespread torture, deaths in custody and the covert transfer of bodies to morgues – events that recall the darkest chapters of repression in the history of the Islamic republic since 1979.

In Isfahan, several political and human rights activists told Independent Persian that a number of detainees from the current uprising are being held in a warehouse near Dastgerd Prison that lacks basic facilities. The location reportedly lacks even basic sanitation and has no access to medical care.

According to these sources, several bodies are removed from the warehouse almost daily and transferred to Isfahan’s morgue. The city’s forensic medicine department is reported to be falsifying causes of death as “car accidents” or “being shot in the street”, while witnesses claim many of the victims were healthy when they were first transferred to the warehouse.

In Tehran, a source told Independent Persian: “Some of the bodies brought to the Kahrizak morgue [in Tehran] showed no signs of gunshot wounds, but there were clear marks of bruising and hand pressure around their necks”. According to the source, these transfers took place on 19 January, and the warmth of the bodies indicated that they had been strangled to death inside the detention centre.

“The scale of the atrocity is so vast that my hands tremble as I speak or write about it,” he added.

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In Mashhad, reports describe the nighttime transfer of detainees to undisclosed locations, severe beatings in detention centres, and security forces storming hospitals to arrest the wounded.

According to these reports, plainclothes security agents and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), armed with military weapons, entered medical facilities and took injured protesters away, including those in critical condition. Medical sources say the injured have not returned to treatment wards.

A video sent to Independent Persian from Mashhad shows that on the evening of Friday 9 January, protesters stormed a detention facility inside a Basij centre on Vakilabad Boulevard, freed detainees and set the building on fire. The Basij are a paramilitary group within the IRGC.

In Shiraz, former detainees said that, during the initial days of their detention, they were subjected to severe beatings, psychological abuse and threats of execution. According to them, “mock executions” were repeatedly used as a tool to terrorise them. Some also reported the secret transfer of bodies to morgues and pressure on families to remain silent.

In Karaj, particularly in Fardis, Independent Persian received information about the killing of five law enforcement personnel who were shot by IRGC and Basij forces on the nights of 8 and 9 January for refusing to carry out orders. This revelation exposes another dimension of the crisis, showing that repression has reached a point where even regime forces face immediate physical elimination for disobedience.

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A released detainee from Karaj, using the alias “Mehrdad” for security reasons, said: “I personally saw them fire a final shot at a wounded civilian in the street. He had been shot and was lying there; then they went over and finished him off.”

In Hamedan, families have reported severe beatings of detainees, days-long uncertainty about their fate, and the handover of bodies on the condition that they be buried immediately and without any ceremony. Some families said they were insulted and beaten by security forces while searching for their children’s bodies.

Several released detainees also told Independent Persian that among the arresting forces were people with Arabic accents who spoke Persian with difficulty. These accounts align with earlier reports of the entry of at least 5,000 fighters affiliated with the Iranian-backed Iraqi paramilitary group, the Popular Mobilisation Forces (Hashd al-Shaabi) into Iran to participate in the repression, arrests and killings of citizens.

In Rasht, one source told Independent Persian: “When families went to look for their children’s lifeless bodies, they were beaten over the head with batons and told: ‘Move it, go find your bastard.’”

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These patterns are recurring against the backdrop of the Islamic republic’s longstanding record of killing detainees since it seized power in February 1979.

This trajectory began in the prisons and detention centres of the early revolutionary years, continued through the 1980s and 1990s, and became emblematic during the 2009 protests with the deaths of young protesters such as Amir Javadifar, Mohsen Rouholamini, Mohammad Kamrani, Ramin Ghahramani and Ahmad Nejatikar in the Kahrizak detention centre.

The same pattern persisted during the nationwide uprising of 2022, with dozens dying in custody or shortly after release due to the severity of torture, including Javad Rouhi, Arshia Emamgholizadeh, Yalda Aghafazli, Alireza Feli and Pouya Gheysvandi.

Human rights activists warn that, under current conditions – marked by the expansion of extrajudicial arrests, systematic torture and the secret transfer of bodies – the number of detainees who die in custody could be significantly higher than in the past.

In this context, Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, warned on 21 January that the death toll of Iran’s national revolution might exceed 20,000. Ms Sato said initial estimates pointed to around 5,000 deaths or more, but new reports received from doctors inside the country indicate that the figure could be at least 20,000.

Reviewed by Tooba Khokhar and Celine Assaf