Over 50,000 arrested in Iran protest crackdown: rights group

PARIS: Iranian authorities have arrested over 50,000 people as part of their crackdown on protests, an NGO said on Tuesday, adding that fresh detentions were ongoing.

Rights groups have accused Iran’s security forces of killing thousands of people in a crackdown on protests that peaked on January 8 and 9 and have since subsided.

But police have also been rounding up large numbers of people from all sections of society nationwide, with the Islamic republic’s leaders blaming “rioters” supported from abroad for the unrest.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said it had counted at least 50,235 arrests linked to the protests.

Arrests have targeted “a wide range of citizens, including students, writers and teachers”, it said.

READ MORE: Rights group says confirmed Iran protest toll nears 6,000

“In some cases, arrests were accompanied by home searches and the confiscation of personal belongings.”

HRANA said it had counted over 300 forced confessions linked to the protests in which suspects made televised statements after being subjected to physical or psychological torture.

Amnesty International said in a statement last week that thousands of people, including children, had been arrested in the crackdown.

It said they were at “grave risk of enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, deaths in custody and prolonged imprisonment and arbitrary executions following grossly unfair trials”.

Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei has vowed “no leniency” against offenders while the judiciary has indicated that some could be charged with crimes that carry the death penalty.

Among those arrested most recently were screenwriter Mehdi Mahmoudian, co-writer on Jafar Panahi’s film “It was Just an Accident”, which was nominated as best international picture at this year’s Oscars and won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes festival.

Abdollah Momeni and women’s rights activist Vida Rabbani were also detained in the same case after they signed a joint statement with over a dozen other activists condemning an “organised state crime against humanity” in the crackdown, according to the foundation of detained Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi.

Mohammadi, the 2023 Nobel peace prize laureate, was arrested at a demonstration in December before the current protest wave began and has only been allowed a single phone call with her family since.

Her foundation said prosecutors will only allow her a new phone call if she adheres to rules over what she says and she has refused these terms.