In a chilling exposé, leaked photographs have revealed the grim reality of Iran’s violent suppression of nationwide protests, shedding light on the staggering human toll of the regime’s heavy-handed response.
The images, obtained by the BBC, depict the bloodied, bruised and disfigured faces of at least 326 victims, including 18 women, who were killed during the government’s brutal crackdown on citizen demonstrations. Tragically, the identities of 69 individuals remained unknown, as they were simply labelled as “John” or “Jane Doe,” suggesting the sheer scale of the devastation.
Many of the victims were reportedly so badly mutilated that they could not be recognised by their own families. The BBC’s analysis of 392 close-up photographs, taken inside the Kahrizak Foreign Medical Centre mortuary, revealed that over 100 individuals had died on a single night, January 9th, believed to be one of the deadliest periods for protesters in Tehran.
Eyewitness accounts paint a harrowing picture, with sources telling the BBC that victims as young as 12 or 13, and as old as 70, were among the dead. The leaked photographs offer a grim snapshot of the thousands believed to have been killed by the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown.
The nationwide protests, which erupted in December, have seen hundreds of thousands of Iranians take to the streets to demonstrate against the rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah, has been a vocal supporter of the protests, which have been met with a violent response from the authorities.
In a stark warning, US President Donald Trump threatened that any further assassination attempts by Iranian leaders would be met with the “whole country” being “blown up.” Tehran, in turn, has vowed to retaliate against any American aggression.
The leaked photographs come as Iran has imposed a near-total internet blackout, a move that rights groups say is aimed at concealing the scale of the regime’s atrocities. However, a small number of people have managed to smuggle out footage, which has been verified by The i, showing the grim reality on the ground, with distraught families searching among body bags for their loved ones.
Observers have condemned the regime’s actions as a “form of collective punishment,” with Hengaw, a human rights organisation, stating that the “deliberate stripping of dignity from the dead and the living alike” is a chilling aspect of the crackdown.
As the world watches in horror, the harrowing scenes emerging from Iran serve as a stark reminder of the human cost of the regime’s brutal suppression of dissent, and the urgent need for the international community to take action to hold those responsible accountable.
