New York, February 24 – Human Rights Watch (HRW), a US-based advocacy group, accused Iranian authorities on Tuesday of waging a brutal campaign to “terrorize” civilians through mass arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances following the killings of protesters and bystanders across Iran by security forces on January 8 and 9.
The protests, which initially erupted on December 28, 2025, from two markets in the Iranian capital Tehran over rising inflation and the steep fall in the value of the rial, subsequently transformed into a nationwide movement.
Citing evidence, HRW stated that senior officials, including Iran’s security and intelligence agencies, such as the police force known as “FARAJA”, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and its intelligence organization, the Ministry of Intelligence, and prosecutorial and judicial officials, have orchestrated a “coordinated, brutal mass crackdown” aimed at suppressing dissent and concealing their atrocities.
According to HRW, in addition to mass arrests, the Iranian authorities have held detainees in incommunicado detention, including in unofficial facilities. The rights body further stated that the officials have broadcast hundreds of coerced "confessions," including those of children, and carried out large-scale enforced disappearances while imposing severe restrictions resembling martial law in several Iranian cities.
“As the entire nation remains in shock, horror, and grief, and families continue to search for their loved ones in the aftermath of the massacres of January 8 and 9, authorities continue to terrorize the population. Arrests continue, and detainees face torture, coerced 'confessions,' and secret, summary, and arbitrary executions. Given the immense dangers those detained and forcibly disappeared face, international monitors should immediately be given unhindered access to all detention facilities and prisons,” said Bahar Saba, senior Iran researcher at HRW.
The rights body stated that "fears of a wave of death sentences and arbitrary, summary, and secret executions" are growing amid official statements and a recent surge in executions in Iran. Since protests began, it said, Iranian officials have vilified protesters, repeatedly referring to them as “criminals” and "mohareb," an individual "waging war against God," which is a capital offence under Iranian law.
HRW called on the United Nations to press Iranian authorities to immediately release all those arbitrarily detained, disclose the fate and whereabouts of people forcibly disappeared, halt any planned executions, and allow independent international bodies, such as the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, unhindered access to the country, including prisons, detention facilities, hospitals, morgues, and cemeteries.
“Systematic impunity has enabled Iranian authorities to repeatedly commit crimes under international law. Other countries’ judicial authorities should initiate criminal investigations of international crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction and in accordance with national laws, with a view to prosecute those suspected of criminal responsibility,” Saba stressed.