Documented cases
Examples abound. These are some we can source, from the first years of the regime to the present.
A note on sources
The Islamic Republic jails, tortures and executes people who document its abuses, and it has never published an honest account of them. The record therefore comes mostly from survivors, families, trade unions, human rights organisations, international bodies and contemporary press.
We cite state statements where they exist, but we do not treat the state as a neutral witness to its own conduct. Where accounts conflict, we say so. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.
The 1980s executions and the Khavaran graves
From 1981 the Islamic Republic executed political prisoners in large numbers, and in the summer of 1988 it killed thousands more in prisons across the country. Amnesty International documents at least 5,000 victims of the 1988 killings, which it describes as crimes against humanity, and says hundreds of them were affiliated with leftist and Kurdish opposition groups. Estimates from other sources range widely, and the authorities have never published a figure.
Leftist prisoners executed in the 1980s, among them members of the Tudeh Party, the Fedaian, Rah-e Kargar and Komala, were buried from 1981 at Khavaran, southeast of Tehran. Many victims of 1988 were members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq; we name the leftists among the dead because they were killed in the same campaign.
The authorities have since worked to erase the site: bulldozers went through the graves in 2009, and in 2022 reports and video showed concrete walls and surveillance-camera poles going up around the cemetery.
Sources
Mansour Osanloo and the Tehran bus workers
Mansour Osanloo led the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkat-e Vahed), an independent union. On 9 May 2005, during the union’s founding meeting, the gathering was attacked. The Center for Human Rights in Iran reports that members of the government-controlled Islamic Workers Council attacked the meeting, that Osanloo suffered knife wounds needing stitches in his neck and tongue, and that security forces present did not intervene. The ICFTU, quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, says about 300 members of the state-affiliated House of Labor and others attacked, and that state security agents watched and filmed.
Osanloo was then detained by the Intelligence Ministry and, after further arrests, sentenced to five years in 2007 on charges of acting against national security and propaganda against the state. He was later released on bail after an international campaign by trade unions.
Where accounts differ. Sources disagree on which state-linked body the attackers belonged to (the Islamic Workers Council, per the Center for Human Rights in Iran, or the House of Labor, per the ICFTU) and on exact arrest dates. Some union and rights-group reports also describe his tongue being cut in custody; we have not found a primary source for that and do not rely on it here.
Sources
The Tudeh Party, 1983
The Tudeh Party, Iran’s communist party, collaborated with the new Islamic regime in its first years. It was not spared. In early 1983 the authorities began arresting its leadership, including its secretary-general, Nureddin Kianouri. Party leaders were made to appear on state television and “confess” to spying for the Soviet Union, and the party was outlawed in May 1983.
Estimates of the number arrested run from about 1,000 to 1,500. Accounts of executions differ: one recent account says up to 200 were executed, while the authorities said at the time that no Tudeh member had been executed.
Sources
Reza Shahabi, treasurer of the bus workers’ union
Reza Shahabi, treasurer and board member of the same Tehran bus workers’ union, was first arrested in June 2010. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience, held solely for peaceful trade union activity. He told Amnesty he was tortured and denied adequate medical care in prison. In 2015 he was convicted of “spreading propaganda against the system” for his complaints about a violent raid on a ward of Evin prison, and in August 2017 he was forced back to prison, where he went on a hunger strike that Amnesty says seriously damaged his health.
This summary reflects Amnesty’s update of 18 September 2017. We have not independently confirmed his situation since.
Sources
Esmail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian, Haft Tappeh
On 18 November 2018 Esmail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian were arrested in Shush after a gathering about unpaid wages at the Haft Tappeh sugar cane complex. Released on bail in mid-December, they described being tortured in custody. Bakhshi wrote that “they tortured me until I thought I was going to die”, and Gholian described sexual insults and threats during interrogation.
They were arrested again on 20 January 2019. A day earlier, state television had broadcast “confessions” in which they were made to say they had colluded with Marxist and Communist groups abroad. Amnesty International called these forced confessions and demanded their immediate and unconditional release.
Sources
Know of a case we should add?
We add cases only where we can link to a source. Send what you have to [email protected].