Reports from Iran say that the regime officials use private chats, phone logs and text messages of protest detainees as incriminating evidence.
CNN on Monday quoted an Iranian woman who says she has been accused by Iranian authorities of running an anti-regime activist group on Telegram.
The woman introduced as Negin has denied the allegation, but she has told CNN she has “some friends” who were political prisoners.
“They put in front of me transcribed printouts of my phone conversations with those friends,” she said, and “questioned me on what my relationship with those people were.”
“They told me ‘Do you think you can get out of here alive? We will execute you. Your sentence is death penalty. We have evidence, we are aware of everything,’” said Negin, which is not her real name.
Negin said that she realized security agents accessed her Telegram account with a different IP address.
Iranian regime reactivated her Telegram account to see who has been in touch with her while Negin was in jail, she added.
Negin was one of hundreds of protesters detained at Iran’s notorious Evin prison in northern Tehran within the first few weeks of anti-government protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in mid-September.
The Iranian government may have used similar tactics to surveil the Telegram and Instagram accounts of Nika Shahkarami, the 16-year-old demonstrator who lost her life after a protest in Tehran on September 20.