Iran’s crackdown after protests that shook the country a week before Jan. 16 has widened into arrests that stretch across cities and rural areas, with families describing raids, incommunicado detention, and restrictions that make it difficult to track who has been taken. The Associated Press reported that security agents arrested people after a nationwide wave of protests calling for the end of theocratic rule, with the government’s response including an internet blackout and severe measures against communication.
The AP reported one case in Tehran where Iranian security agents came at 2 a.m. outside the home of the Nakhii family, waking two sisters, forcing them to provide the passwords for their phones, and taking them away. The AP said the sisters, Nyusha and Mona, were accused of participating in the protests that began in late December and peaked on Jan. 8 and 9. A friend of the women, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity, said Jan. 16 was when they were arrested.
The friend said the sisters were first taken to Tehran’s Evin prison, where they were allowed to contact their parents, before being moved later to Qarchak, a women’s prison on the outskirts of Tehran where rights groups reported overcrowding and lack of hygiene even before the crackdown. Other detainees documented by rights monitoring groups, the AP reported, were held without contact for days or weeks.
In interviews and documents reviewed by the AP, activists described the arrests as part of a dragnet that swept in large numbers of people from different parts of Iranian society after the crackdown that began last month. The AP said university students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes, and filmmakers were among those detained, along with reformist figures close to President Masoud Pezeshkian. Activists monitoring detainees said the sweeps touched large swaths of society, with arrests reported by families and contacts on the ground.
The AP reported that the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the number of arrests at more than 50,000, but that the AP was unable to verify the figure. Activists and reporting pointed to the difficulty of tracking detainees after authorities imposed an internet blackout, with reports leaking out only with difficulty, and additional documentation efforts conducted by groups outside Iran.
For detainee tracking inside Iran and from abroad, Shiva Nazarahari, an organizer with the Committee for Monitoring the Status of Detained Protesters, told the AP that “Authorities continue to identify people and detain them.” Nazarahari said the committee has verified the names of more than 2,200 people arrested, based on direct reports from families and a network of contacts. The AP said the verified arrestees include 107 university students, 82 children as young as 13, and 19 lawyers and 106 doctors.
Nazarahari said Iranian authorities have reviewed municipal street cameras, store surveillance cameras, and drone footage to identify people who participated in the protests and to track them to their homes or places of work, where they were arrested. One protester reached by the AP in Gohardasht, a middle-class area outside Tehran, said two of his relatives and three of his brother’s friends were killed in the first days of the crackdown and also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being targeted.
Beyond detention, the AP reported that authorities have expanded measures aimed at protesters and the people around them. Musa Barzin, an attorney with Dadban, said authorities have moved to suspend bank accounts, block SIM cards, and confiscate property of protesters’ relatives or people who publicly express support for them. Barzin said the situation for detainees and lawyers has worsened, saying that “The following of the law is in the worst situation it has ever been,” and he described an increase in denial of access to legal counsel and holding detainees for days or weeks before any phone calls to family.
The AP also reported that some civic and professional groups have continued to issue statements despite the crackdown. Among them, the Writers’ Association of Iran described the protests as an uprising against “47 years of systemic corruption and discrimination,” and it said two of its members, including a member of its secretariat, were detained. A national council representing schoolteachers urged families to speak out about detained children and students, and a spokesman for the council said Sunday that it had documented the deaths of at least 200 minors killed in the crackdown.
Even as authorities organized pro-government rallies with hundreds of thousands of people to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, some activists and lawyers described the crackdown’s ferocity as a sign of rising fear inside the government. Barzin, the AP reported, said the intensity of the crackdown indicates Iran’s leadership “for the first time is afraid of being overthrown.”
The story includes a correction to the ages of Nyusha and Mona.