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The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran urged an independent investigation into potential crimes against humanity in Iran, saying an existing international fact-finding mechanism could be expanded to examine the latest protest crackdown.
In an interview with ABC News Mai Sato said an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council could be held as early as this week and could call for continuing the international fact-finding mission set up after the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protests.
“They could be mandated to investigate this [latest] protest and the human rights impact in order to collect evidence and hold people accountable,” she said.
Asked whether crimes against humanity had been committed, Sato said it was possible but required investigation.
“Crimes against humanity [are] defined as widespread, systematic human rights violations against civilians, and that includes murder, torture, arbitrary detention,” she said. "There also needs to be intent. There [have] been so many casualties, and I have seen so many videos of security forces opening fire to unarmed civilians.
"But I think what we are seeing is extremely serious and after that I think the fact-finding mission, which is already in place, will be best placed to investigate that."
Vignettes of horror on Iran's streets were trickling past a state-imposed internet blackout, as eyewitnesses described to Iran International the widespread killing and blinding of protestors with live fire and the denial of medical care to survivors.
Street protests which burst forth on Dec. 28 citing economic grievances quickly morphed into calls for the downfall of the nearly 50-year-old theocracy.
Authorities deployed deadly force to largely quell the unrest in the bloodiest crackdown on demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
What has emerged since Iran imposed a nationwide internet blackout on January 8 points to bloodshed on a scale that is horrifying beyond comprehension.
Through scattered Starlink messages, rare phone calls, and videos smuggled out at great personal risk, fragments of evidence have begun to form a picture of mass killings across major cities, smaller towns, and even villages.
In a brief message sent via Starlink from Tehran to Iran International, one resident said the situation in the capital and other cities was so dire that “every person is reporting the death of a family member, relative, neighbor, or friend,” stressing that “this is not an exaggeration.”
“The air was filled with the smell of blood in Tajrish and Narmak,” an Iranian user outside the country quoted a contact as saying in a post on X, referring to neighborhoods in north and east Tehran.
“They were washing the blood from the streets with the municipal irrigation tankers they use to water roadside plants.”
A Tehran resident told Iran International that he saw heavy deployments of IRGC forces early on Thursday morning—just before the blackout—with security units transporting heavy machine guns and concealing them in parking garages across different neighborhoods.
An image later circulated showing a mounted military-grade machine gun on a security forces vehicle in Tehran’s Sadeghieh district, reportedly taken days earlier.
Iran International has reported that as many as 12,000 people may have been killed over just two days, January 8 and 9. CBS News, citing two sources—one of them inside Iran—suggested the figure could be as high as 20,000.
Thousands more have reportedly been detained nationwide. Iranian authorities have labeled anyone present on the streets after January 8 a mohareb—“one who wages war against God”—a charge that carries the death penalty.
The whereabouts of most detainees remain unknown.
The government, meanwhile, claims protesters killed hundreds of security personnel and government supporters. State media has broadcast images of a mass funeral for 100 alleged victims.
Unverified reports suggest that some families have been pressured to sign documents identifying their killed relatives as members of the Basij militia—an apparent effort to inflate official casualty figures.
BBC Persian journalist Farzad Seifkaran reported receiving a message from Tehran stating that one family was told it must either declare its relative an “active Basij member” or sign a document demanding retribution against three unnamed individuals before being allowed to retrieve the body.
Similar pressure was reported during the 2009 protests. More recently, authorities attempted to portray Amir-Hesam Khodayari, a 22-year-old killed in Kouhdasht, Lorestan province, as a Basij member—an effort publicly rejected by his father during the burial.
In several cases, families have also said they were asked to pay for the bullets used to kill their relatives..
On Sunday, two short videos surfaced showing families inside a hangar belonging to Tehran’s forensic medicine organization in the Kahrizak area. Dozens of bodies wrapped in black bags were visible, some on gurneys and others laid directly on the floor.
In one clip, a woman’s voice can be heard crying out to her child: “Get up my love, get up for God’s sake,” as families wander among the bodies searching in shock.
The footage appeared to capture only a fraction of what was taking place.
Hours later, Vahid, an Iranian user based in the United States who has documented Iranian protests since 2009, released a compilation of 12 videos. Some showed the interior of the same facility, where a screen displayed names and photos of the dead while a loudspeaker called out names, instructing families to collect bodies.
According to Vahid, the footage was brought out of Iran by someone who had recently escaped the country. “They are bringing in the bodies in pick-up trucks and telling people to search them themselves,” the individual told him.
Later footage showed bodies being unloaded from trailers. Outside the building, hundreds of people moved among rows of corpses laid directly on the ground, wailing and screaming.
A source who sent images from Kahrizak told Vahid he had traveled nearly 1,000 kilometers to reach a border area where he could access the internet.
Amid the mourning, signs of defiance emerged. Rather than chanting traditional Islamic phrases, some mourners clapped and ululated, as if escorting a bride or groom.
Others raised photographs of the dead and shouted slogans including: “Death to Khamenei,” “This is the year of bloodshed, Khamenei will be toppled,” and “I will kill the one who killed my brother.”
The Islamic Republic's resort to the deadliest crackdown on protestors in its history signals endgame for the theocracy, retired US Army General and ex-CIA director David Petraeus told Iran International Insight, the channel's town hall held in Washington DC.
“This regime is dying. Essentially it’s fighting, it’s killing again, but it is also dying," said Petraeus, a retired four-star Army general who now runs the Middle East business of US private equity firm KKR.
“I think it signals enormous questions about the regime's ability to sustain the situation,” he said, arguing Tehran is under more pressure now than at almost any point since the Iran-Iraq war.
Check Point Research said on Monday the Iran-linked “Handala Hack” group resurfaced during the nationwide internet blackout.
The firm says the group is now routing its operations through Starlink IP ranges to hit targets across the Middle East.
