Following the bloody crackdown on protests in Iran that left thousands killed, alarming accounts have emerged about the condition of detainees. The fate of thousands of people remains uncertain. An interview with two experts from two human rights organizations.
Five weeks after the start of a new wave of anti-regime protests in Iran, which was met with an unprecedentedly bloody crackdown in the 47-year history of the Iranian regime, horrifying news has emerged about the mass arrests of citizens.
Mass Arrests After Protests in Iran, the Naked Repression of Khamenei’s Rule
Accounts published by human rights activists and media outlets indicate severe violence against detainees, including beatings, verbal abuse, torture, sexual abuse, and deprivation of access to the most basic human and sanitary needs, especially for detained women, at a time when detention centers and prisons are overcrowded beyond capacity.
Security agencies abduct and detain citizens, and brutal torture to extract confessions begins immediately.The lives of detainees are currently in serious danger, and the Iranian regime has a long record of torture and deaths under torture in prisons and security detention centers.
Detainees have no access to any of their basic rights. Even the families of some detainees, in complete ignorance of their children’s fate, are visiting morgues and cemeteries in the hope of finding some trace of them. The handling of detainees’ cases is in no way following any legal process. Everything is under the control of intelligence agencies and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, the regime’s main military and security force), and no judicial institution is accountable to families.
While most attention is focused on those killed in the January 2026 protests, people are witnessing widespread, illegal, and arbitrary arrests across the country, in all cities and provinces. It appears that everything currently known about these arrests, in terms of their scale and number, may still be only the tip of the iceberg, as many families are remaining silent due to fear and intimidation by security bodies and judicial authorities warning them not to publicize news of the arrests.
Security agencies intimidate families into not publicizing the arrests, telling them that if the cases become public, the detainee’s situation will worsen, even though this claim is completely at odds with reality.
UK Sanctions 10 Iranian Regime Officials Over Human Rights Abuses
The alarming situation of detainees
All those who have so far been released and managed to contact human rights organizations have stated that the physical and psychological pressure and torture were unbearable, and that many detainees were forced to make coerced confessions under these conditions and were then released the same day on bail.
Previously, many detainees were forced to sign blank papers, and there is now a risk that these individuals could face the most serious security-related charges.
Iranian society is in an extremely volatile state following the bloody suppression of the January 2026 protests. This is a society in which a large segment of the population was already living under the pressure of deep economic and social crises. Now, the combination of these factors has made the outlook for the future more troubling than ever, a situation in which thousands of families are spending their days waiting for news of their detained loved ones, living with fear, uncertainty, and anguish.
