Iran | Documented Figures Far Below Reality of Protester Killings; “Prison Doctors Instructed Not To Treat Injured Protesters So They’d Die”

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 19 January 2026: Twenty-three days since the start of the nationwide protests in Iran and twelve days after the internet blackout, information and eyewitness accounts are revealing the scale of the large-scale killing of protesters by state forces. Given the magnitude of these crimes and the severe restrictions on communications, it is not currently possible to publish precise casualty figures in line with the IHRNGO’s standards, which require multi-layered verification and confirmation by at least two independent sources. For this reason, the organisation will refrain from issuing daily statistics until sufficient documentation has been obtained.

In its most recent report, based on documentation received from credible sources, IHRNGO reported the deaths of at least 3,428 protesters. This figure is meaningfully lower than eyewitness accounts and the organisation’s own assessment of the likely true number of fatalities. Estimates published by some media outlets, drawing on information reportedly received from government or hospital sources, indicate that between 5,000 and 20,000 protesters may have been killed. Meanwhile, Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, referred in a speech to “several thousand” deaths, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Parliament, also spoke of “thousands” killed.

It is important to recall that official sources consistently report figures for state violence that are far below the reality. For example, over the past five years the Islamic Republic has officially announced only an annual average of 12 per cent of the executions that IHRNGO has verified through two independent sources.

IHRNGO continues to document state crimes committed in the suppression of the 2025 protests and urges all citizens and individuals with access to information or evidence that could help clarify the full extent of these crimes to share it with the organisation.

IHRNGO Director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “Information received from eyewitnesses, families and other citizens, together with other available evidence, indicates that the number of protesters killed may exceed even the highest media estimates. There is no doubt that the Islamic Republic has committed one of the largest mass killings of protesters in our time, and all indications are that this massacre was planned and carried out with full coordination. This suggests that these crimes were committed pursuant to a single directive from the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, with the cooperation of the repressive forces, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Accountability for these crimes through the International Criminal Court, and the listing of the IRGC as an international terrorist organisation, must be treated as urgent priorities by the international community. The international community must also take very seriously the threats by Islamic Republic officials to issue and carry out death sentences against protesters, and must act to prevent another large-scale massacre, this time inside prisons.”

According to IHRNGO estimates, around 25,000 people have been arrested in relation to the protests. State media began broadcasting confessions obtained under coercion and torture of protesters within the first week of protests. This is while today, at the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, Mohseni Ejei, Head of the Islamic Republic’s Judiciary, stated that in cases where forced confessions have been aired on state television in recent days and the evidence is “this clear”, with an “explicit confession” on file, proceedings should not be “left pending” and must be dealt with “swiftly.” As IHRNGO has documented in its annual death penalty reports, such confessions are routinely used as the basis for death sentences imposed after unfair trials that lack basic due process guarantees.

At the same time, Ahmadreza Radan, Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Republic’s police forces, said: “We will pursue the rioters and terrorists to the last person. Fortunately, many of them have been arrested. All of them confessed, confessions that included violence, murder and looting, and their cases have been opened and are being processed by the judicial authorities. Many more have been identified and we will go after them one by one and arrest them all.” 

Shiraz Central Prison

According to informed IHRNGO sources, a large wave of arrests took place on 7 January in the Maliabad and Farhangian neighbourhoods of Shiraz. The detainees, estimated to be over 1,000, were transferred to unsuitable locations, including the basement of Shiraz Central (Adel Abad) Prison and the adjacent detention facility. Reports confirm that two injured teenagers who had been shot in the Farhangian neighbourhood died in the prison infirmary due to severe blood loss as a result of being denied medical treatment.

An informed source told IHRNGO: “A lot of detainees from the city of Marvdasht have been transferred to Shiraz, and many of them have pellet injuries. There are teenagers aged 16 to 18 amongst them and the physical condition of some of them is shocking. Hossein Ahmadzadeh is one of them. He has lost both eyes and his skull is filled with pellets. Kourosh Fatemi and Omid Farahani, both 16, were shot in the lower back and have been paralysed.”

The source added: “Parsa Rabiei, Mehrdad Khorshidi, Hossein Ramezanpour, Davoud Almasi and Morteza Entekhabi are among the other detained teenagers. The medical situation in the prison is so critical that one of the prison doctors, Dr Jafarzadeh, has been arrested for insisting on treating the wounded, after medical staff were instructed not to treat injured detainees so that they’d die from blood loss.”

IHRNGO sources also emphasised that at least 70 people have been killed in Marvdasht, and efforts to verify the identities of all of them are continuing. According to these reports, Shiraz Central Prison has been placed under an emergency regime for four days in recent days, prisoners have been denied outdoor time, and all telephone lines and visits have been suspended.

Source: Iran Human Rights, Staff, January 19, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde