UN rapporteur warns of escalating Iran abuses ahead of protests

UN Special Rapporteur on Iran Mai Sato said on Thursday she sent three urgent communications to Iranian authorities in December 2025 warning of grave human rights violations, weeks before nationwide protests erupted on December 28.

The alerts concerned death sentences imposed on student Ehsan Faridi for “corruption on earth” based solely on intelligence reports, and on 67-year-old Zahra Shahbaz Tabari for “armed rebellion” after a 10-minute trial over a protest slogan cloth, as well as widespread prison abuses including torture, unnotified executions, and deaths in facilities such as Qarchak, Ghezel-Hesar, Sheyban, and Lakan, Sato posted on X.

“The Iranian authorities responded to each, dismissing the sources as hostile or misinformed and asserting that all procedures were lawful,” she added.

“Today, we do not know how many people are detained, where they are held, or in what condition. We do not know how many have been sentenced to death or already executed. We do not even know how many people have been killed: the State’s own figure stands at over 3,000, while reports by civil society organizations far exceed that number,” Sato said.