CAIRO (AP) — Iranian security agents came at 2 a.m., pulling up in half a dozen cars outside the Nakhii family’s home. They woke the sleeping sisters, Nyusha and Mona, and forced them to give the passwords to their phones. Then they took the two.
The women were accused of taking part in the nationwide protests that rocked Iran a week earlier, a friend of the pair told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for her safety as she described the Jan. 16 arrests.
Such arrests come weeks after a government crackdown last month crushed protests calling for an end to the country’s theocratic rule. Reports of raids on homes and workplaces came from major cities and rural towns alike, revealing a network that reached large parts of Iranian society. Students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes and filmmakers were 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 who monitor the arrests. This left desperate relatives searching for their loved ones.
The US-based news agency Human Rights Activists estimated the number of arrests at more than 50,000. The AP could not verify the figure. Tracking the detainees has been difficult since Iranian authorities imposed an internet blackout, and reports trickle in only with difficulty.
Other activist groups outside of Iran also worked to document the operations.
“The authorities continue to identify people and detain them,” said Shiva Nazarahari, an organizer with one such group, the Committee to Monitor the Status of Detained Protesters.
So far, the committee has verified the names of more than 2,200 people who have been arrested, using direct reports from families and a network of contacts on the ground. Among those arrested are 107 students, 82 children under the age of 13, as well as 19 lawyers and 106 doctors.
Nazarahari said authorities have reviewed municipal street cameras, store surveillance cameras and drone footage to track people who participated in the protests to their homes or workplaces, where they are arrested.
Kept for weeks without contact
The protests began in late December, sparked by anger over rising prices, and quickly spread across the country. They peaked on January 8 and 9, when hundreds of thousands of people from more than 190 towns and cities 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 much higher. The Iranian government provided its only death toll on January 21, saying 3,117 people had been killed. The theocracy has underestimated or underreported deaths from past unrest.
Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, a hardline cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, has become the face of the crackdown, labeling protesters “terrorists” and calling for speedy sentences.
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 the condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by the authorities.
Nakhii’s sisters, Nyusha, 25, and Mona, 37, 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 including overcrowding and unsanitary conditions even before the crackdown.
Other people whose arrests were documented by the inmate commission disappeared in prisons. Abolfazl Jazbi’s family has not heard from him since his arrest on January 15 at a factory in the southern city of Isfahan. Jazbi suffers from a severe blood disorder that requires medication, according to the committee.
Atila Sultanpour, 45, has not been heard from since he was taken from his home in Tehran on January 29 by security agents who severely beat him, according to Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers based abroad that also documents the detainees.
Authorities have also taken steps to freeze bank accounts, block SIM cards and confiscate property of relatives of protesters or people who publicly express support for them, said Musa Barzin, a lawyer in Dadban, citing reports from families.
In past crackdowns on protests, authorities have sometimes adhered to some aspect of due process and the rule of law, but not this time, Barzin said. Authorities increasingly deny detainees access to legal counsel and often detain them for days or weeks before allowing any phone calls to family. According to Dadban, lawyers representing the arrested protesters also faced court summons and detention.
“Law enforcement is the worst it’s ever been,” Barzin said.
Signs of defiance continue
Despite the crackdown, many civic groups continue to issue defiant statements.
The Writers’ Association of Iran, an independent group with a long tradition of dissent, issued a statement describing the protests as a revolt against “47 years of systemic corruption and discrimination.”
It also announced that two of its members had been detained, including a member of its secretariat.
A national council representing teachers has urged families to speak up about detained children and pupils. “Do not be afraid of threats from security forces. Consult an independent adviser. Make your children’s names public,” it said in a statement.
A spokesman for the council said on Sunday it had documented the deaths of at least 200 minors who were killed in the crackdown. This figure has increased by several dozen from the number a few days before.
“Every day we tell ourselves that this is the last list,” Mohammad Habibi wrote on X. “But the next morning, new names come again.”
Bars and medical groups have spoken out, including Iran’s state-sanctioned doctors’ council, which has called on authorities to stop harassing medical staff.
Anger over the bloodshed now adds to bitterness over the economy, which has been drained by decades of sanctions, corruption and mismanagement. The value of the currency fell and inflation rose to record levels.
The Iranian government has announced gestures such as the launch of a new voucher program for essential goods. Labor and trade groups, including a national union of pensioners, issued statements condemning the economic and political crisis.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump moved an aircraft carrier and other military assets to the Persian Gulf and suggested the US could attack Iran over the killing of peaceful protesters or if Tehran launches mass executions over protests. A second US aircraft carrier is on its way to the Middle East.
In the past, the Iranian theocracy has faced US protests and threats, and the crackdown has shown the iron grip it has on the country. This week, authorities held pro-government rallies of hundreds of thousands to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Still, Barzin said, he sees the ferocity of the crackdown as a sign that Iran’s leadership “for the first time fears being overthrown.”
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Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
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This story corrects the ages for Nyusha and Mona.