CAIRO (AP) — Iranian security agents arrived at 2 a.m., pulling up in half a dozen cars outside the Nakhi family’s home. They wake up the sleeping sisters, Nyusha and Mona, and force them to give them their phone passwords. Then they took two people.
The women were accused of taking part in nationwide protests that rocked Iran a week ago, a friend of the pair told The Associated Press, describing the Jan. 16 arrest on condition of anonymity to protect her.
Such arrests have been taking place for weeks after a government crackdown last month crushed protests calling for an end to the country’s theocratic rule. Reports of raids on homes and workplaces have come from major cities and rural towns alike, revealing a dragnet that touches large parts of Iranian society. University students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes and filmmakers, as well as reformist figures close to President Massoud Pezhekian, have proliferated.
According to activists monitoring the arrests, they are held incommunicado for days or weeks and prevented from contacting family members or lawyers. This has left distraught relatives searching for their loved ones.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the number of arrests was more than 50,000. The AP was unable to verify the figures. Since Iranian authorities imposed an internet blackout, it has been difficult to track the detainees, and reports trickle out with difficulty.
Other activist groups outside Iran are also working to document the sweeps.
“The authorities continue to identify people and detain them,” said Shiv Nazarhari, an organizer of one of those groups, the Committee to Monitor the Status of Detained Protesters.
So far, the committee has verified the names of more than 2,200 people arrested using direct reports from families and a network of contacts on the ground. Among those arrested are 107 university students, 82 13-year-old children, 19 lawyers and 116 doctors.
Nazarhari said authorities are reviewing municipal street cameras, store surveillance cameras and drone footage to track people who participated in the protests to their homes or workplaces, where they were arrested.
Held for weeks with no contact
The protests, which began in late December, were fueled by anger over price hikes and quickly spread across the country. They peaked on January 8 and 9, when thousands of people took to the streets in more than 190 towns and cities across the country.
Security forces responded with unprecedented violence. The Human Rights Activist News Agency has counted more than 7,000,000 dead so far and says the actual number is much higher. Iran’s government said on January 21 that 3,117 people had been killed. Theocracy has undercounted or underreported deaths from past unrest.
Gholamhossein Mohseni Ezehi, the hard-line cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, became the face of the crackdown, labeling protesters “terrorists” and demanding swift punishment.
Since then, “detention has become more widespread because it’s like the entire suffocation of society,” said one protester AP reached in Gohardasht, a middle-class area outside Iran’s capital. He said two of his relatives and three of his brother-in-law’s friends were killed on the first day of the crackdown, along with several neighbors. The protester spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities.
The Nakhi sisters, Nyusha, 25, and Mona, 37, were previously taken to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where they were allowed contact with their parents, their friend said. Later, she said, they were moved to Karchak, a women’s prison on the outskirts of Tehran where rights groups reported conditions that included overcrowding and a lack of hygiene before the crackdown.
Other persons arrested by the detention committee have disappeared in jail. Abolfazal Jazbi’s family has not heard from him since he was arrested on January 15 at a factory in the southern city of Isfahan. According to the committee, Jazbi has a serious blood problem that requires medication.
Attila Sultanpour, 45, has not been heard from since he was taken from his home in Tehran on January 29 by security agents, who severely beat him, according to Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers abroad, which also has custody documents.
Authorities have also moved to suspend bank accounts, block SIM cards and confiscate property belonging to protesters’ relatives or people who publicly support them, Dudban lawyer Musa Berzin said, citing family reports.
At protests in the past, authorities sometimes followed the veneer of due process and the rule of law, but not this time, Barzin said. Authorities are denying detainees access to legal counsel and holding them for days or weeks before allowing them to make any phone calls to families. Lawyers representing the arrested protesters have also faced court summons and detention, according to Dadban.
“Law enforcement is at the worst it’s ever been,” Barzin said.
Signs of protest continue
Despite the crackdown, many civic groups continue to issue defiant statements.
The Writers’ Union of Iran, an independent group with a long tradition of dissent, issued a statement describing the protests as a revolt against “47 years of systemic corruption and discrimination.”
It has also announced that two members including one member of the secretariat have been detained.
The National Council representing school teachers has urged families to speak out about detained children and students. “Do not be intimidated by threats from security forces. Refer to independent counsel. Make your children’s names public,” it said in a statement.
A spokesman for the council said on Sunday it had documented the deaths of at least 200 minors killed in the crackdown. That number is a dozen more than the count a few days ago.
“Every day we tell ourselves this is the last list,” wrote Mohamed Habibi in X. “But the next morning, new names come up again.”
Bar associations and medical groups have also spoken out, including Iran’s state-accredited doctors’ council, which has called on authorities to stop harassing medical staff.
Anger at the bloodshed of an economy hollowed out by decades of embargo, corruption and mismanagement has now added bitterness. The value of the currency has fallen, and inflation has reached record levels.
The Iranian government has announced gestures such as launching a new coupon program for essential goods. Labor and business groups, including the National Retirees’ Syndicate, have issued statements condemning the economic and political crisis.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has moved an aircraft carrier and other military assets to the Persian Gulf and has suggested the US could attack Iran if it kills peaceful protesters or if Tehran begins mass executions at protests. A second US aircraft carrier is on its way to the Middle East.
Iran’s theocracy has faced protests and US threats in the past, and the crackdown showed the iron grip it has on the country. This week, authorities organized pro-government rallies with hundreds of thousands of people to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Still, Barzin said, he sees the ferocity of the crackdown as a sign that Iran’s leadership is “afraid of being defeated for the first time.”
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Associated Press writer Karim Chehaib in Beirut contributed to this report.
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This story corrects the ages of Nyusha and Mona.
