The Iranian security agents came at 2 am, 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 theirs said, speaking on condition of anonymity as she described the January 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 swathes 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.
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 US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the number of arrests at more than 50,000. Tracking the detainees has been difficult since Iranian authorities imposed an internet blackout.
“Authorities continue to identify people and detain them,” said Shiva Nazarahari, an organiser with one of those groups, the Committee for Monitoring the Status of Detained Protesters. 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.
The protests began in late December, triggered by anger over spiralling prices, and quickly spread across the country. They peaked on January 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 January 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, labelling protesters as “terrorists” and calling for fast-tracked punishments.
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 January 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.
Also read: US preparing for military operation against Iran: Officials
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