CAIRO (AP) — The Iranian security agents came at 2 a.m., pulling up in a half-dozen cars outside the home of the Nakhii family. They woke up the sleeping sisters, Nyusha and Mona, and forced them to give the passwords for their phones. Then they took the two away. The women were accused of participating in the nationwide protests that shook Iran a week earlier, a friend of the pair told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for her security as she described the Jan. 16 arrests. Such arrests have been happening for weeks following the government crackdown last month that crushed the protests calling for the end of 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 has touched large swaths of Iranian society. University students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes and filmmakers have been swept up, as well as reformist figures close to President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Mira Donovan

They are often held incommunicado for days or weeks and prevented from contacting family members or lawyers, according to activists monitoring the arrests. That has left desperate relatives searching for their loved ones.The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the number of arrests at more than 50,000. The AP has been unable to verify the figure. Tracking the detainees has been difficult since Iranian authorities imposed an internet blackout, and reports leak out only with difficulty. Other activist groups outside Iran have also been working to document the sweeps. “Authorities continue to identify people and detain them,” said Shiva Nazarahari, an organizer with one of those groups, the Committee for Monitoring the Status of Detained Protesters.

Authorities Arrest Over 2,200 Protesters Using Street Cameras and Drone Surveillance

So far, the committee has verified the names of more than 2,200 people who were arrested, using direct reports from families and a network of contacts on the ground. The arrestees include 107 university students, 82 children as young as 13, as well as 19 lawyers and 106 doctors. Nazarahari said authorities have been reviewing municipal street cameras, store surveillance cameras and drone footage to track people who participated in the protests to their homes or places of work, where they are arrested.

The protests began in late December, triggered by anger over spiraling prices, and quickly spread across the country. They peaked on Jan. 8 and 9, when hundreds of thousands of people in more than 190 cities and towns across the country took to the streets. Security forces responded by unleashing unprecedented violence. The Human Rights Activists News Agency has so far counted more than 7,000 dead and says the true number is far higher. Iran’s government offered its only death toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed. The theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest. Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, a hard-line cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, became the face of the crackdown, labeling protesters “terrorists” and calling for fast-tracked punishments.

Since then, “detentions have been very widespread because it’s like a whole suffocation of society,” said one protester, reached by the AP in Gohardasht, a middle-class area outside the Iranian capital. He said two of his relatives and three of his brother’s friends were killed in the first days of the crackdown, as well as several neighbors. The protester spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities. The Nakhii sisters, 37-year-old Nyusha and 25-year-old Mona, were first taken to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where they were allowed to contact their parents, their friend said. Later, she said, they were moved to Qarchak, a women’s prison on the outskirts of Tehran where rights groups reported conditions that included overcrowding and lack of hygiene even before the crackdown. Other people whose arrests were documented by the detainees committee have disappeared into the prisons. The family of Abolfazl Jazbi has not heard from him since his Jan. 15 arrest at a factory in the southern city of Isfahan. Jazbi suffers from a severe blood disorder that requires medication, according to the committee.

Iran Expands Protest Crackdown, Detainees Held Without Lawyers and Families Cut Off.

Atila Sultanpour, 45, has not been heard from since he was taken from his home in Tehran on Jan. 29 by security agents who beat him severely, according to Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers based abroad who are also documenting detentions. Authorities have also moved to suspend bank accounts, block SIM cards and confiscate the property of protesters’ relatives or people who publicly express support for them, said Musa Barzin, an attorney with Dadban, citing reports from families. In past crackdowns on protests, authorities sometimes adhered to a veneer of due process and rule of law, but not this time, Barzin said. Authorities are increasingly denying detainees access to legal counsel and often holding them for days or weeks before allowing any phone calls to family. Lawyers representing arrested protesters also have faced court summons and detention, according to Dadban.

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Helen S. Pryor

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Helen S. Pryor covers international news and the environment, bringing a deep commitment to understanding global dynamics and ecological change.

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