Iranian women recall the first time they went out uncovered

The person was shot with a Kalashnikov rifle from about 20 meters away in the central city of Isfahan on the evening of January 9, according to an informed source.

“The infection at the wound site is still continuing, and a problem with the tissue flap means another surgery is necessary,” the source said.

The bullet shattered bone and severed a nerve and tendon in the leg, leaving some of the damage permanent.

What followed the shooting began a medical ordeal that has stretched across months, repeated hospital admissions and operating rooms.

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Iran International is withholding the individual’s identity and the names of the hospitals involved because of security concerns.

Shot, taken away and left in a gutter

Security forces put the badly wounded protester into a vehicle after the shooting. But the patient never reached hospital in that vehicle.

Believing the wounded person had died, the forces left them in a roadside gutter.

“Some time later, someone found the protester and took them to a hospital,” the source said.

The patient was still alive, but in critical condition.

Doctors administered 18 units of blood in an effort to save the protester’s life.

After the condition partially stabilized, the person was transferred to another hospital. There, the medical emergency collided with another problem: the presence of intelligence forces.

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  Iranian protester still unable to walk despite 23 operations for gunshot wound

Agents at one point prevented orthopedic doctors from entering to perform surgery.

Medical staff nevertheless secretly arranged to transfer the patient to the operating room.

A wound that would not heal

Surviving the shooting was only the beginning. The bullet had extensively shattered the bone in the leg, while exposure of the open wound to contamination contributed to a severe infection.

The patient remained in hospital for about four months.

Doctors used vacuum-assisted therapy to treat the wound and an external fixator to stabilize the severe bone injury. Surgery followed surgery.

Discharge from hospital did not bring the treatment to an end. The protester repeatedly had to return as doctors continued trying to treat the damage and control the infection.

A tissue flap – skin and underlying tissue transferred to reconstruct the damaged area – has since developed complications, making yet another operation necessary.

It will be the 26th.

Months after the shooting, the infection remains uncontrolled and protester’s life continues to move between home, hospital and the operating room.

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  Iranian protester undergoes months of secret treatment to save wounded leg

Treatment under security pressure

The physical injuries are only part of the difficulty surrounding the treatment.

The wounded person works in an administrative position at a government institution, and concern that the circumstances of the injury could become known has added to the difficulties surrounding treatment.

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The account is one of several received by Iran International describing protesters facing prolonged treatment after being wounded during the January demonstrations.

The family of a 34-year-old demonstrator wounded in Qazvin previously told Iran International that the patient underwent more than five operations after being shot in the lower leg with live ammunition and had to pursue parts of the treatment secretly and at considerable expense.

The report states that senior officials directed, executed, and subsequently covered up acts that constitute crimes against humanity.

The findings are based on interviews with 270 witnesses, analysis of over 2,000 videos, and leaked official Iranian government documents.

"Amnesty International unequivocally opposes violations of international law by all parties and rejects any attempt to instrumentalize the suffering of victims of human rights violations in Iran to justify unlawful attacks that inflict further civilian harm," said Secretary General Agnès Callamard at the report's press launch, addressing both state repression and broader regional conflict.

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  Amnesty says Iran drove global surge in executions in 2025

Calls for international criminal prosecutions

Amnesty International identified 87 Iranian officials, including top IRGC and police commanders, who it said should be investigated for crimes against humanity under superior responsibility principles. Amnesty said that it shared its findings and the list of identified officials with Iran's leadership prior to publication but received no response.

"This investigation exposes the layers of command and coordination behind the Iranian authorities' deadly protest crackdowns," Callamard said. "The agents on the streets operated within a hierarchical and coordinated chain of command linking them to officials who directed, enabled, facilitated and supported crimes committed on a massive scale. It is beyond time to establish an international criminal justice mechanism for Iran before another protest massacre."

The report warned that impunity for the 2022 crackdown directly enabled subsequent mass atrocities, warning that state suppression of demonstrations earlier this year bore the same hallmarks on an even wider and deadlier scale. Amnesty urged the UN General Assembly to establish an independent international criminal justice mechanism to prosecute responsible officials.

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  A generation shaped by Woman, Life, Freedom refuses to go back

High-ranking officials named for criminal investigation

Among the top-tier officials listed for criminal investigation under command responsibility principles are Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28, 2026, during military strikes, and former Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, who died on June 13, 2025.

Other key figures identified in the report include Ahmad Vahidi, who served as Minister of Interior during the 2022 crackdown and was subsequently appointed General Commander of the IRGC, Deputy Interior Minister for Security Majid Mir-Ahmadi, Tehran IRGC Commander Hassan Hassanzadeh, and Tehran Deputy Prosecutor Mohammad Shahriari.

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  Security forces deploy as shops in western Iran strike on Mahsa Amini anniversary

Leaked documents show early surveillance directives

Minutes from confidential security meetings show that within 48 hours of Mahsa Amini’s death in custody on September 16, 2022, state officials focused on controlling the public narrative and suppressing online protests. Security chiefs discussed strategies to secure public statements from Amini's father to support the official explanation of her death.

A government resolution dated September 18, 2022, assigned the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit to monitor athletes and political figures. The same document tasked the Ministry of Intelligence with tracking actors, artists, and opposition movements.

Written orders drove escalation of lethal force

Written instructions issued by the General Staff of the Armed Forces on September 21, 2022, ordered security forces nationwide to deliver a "firm and severe response" to demonstrations. Of the 326 fatalities documented during protest dispersals or in militarized zones, 178 occurred within the first two weeks of the crackdown.

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  Women face forced undressing, breast touching at Iran's Evin Prison

Amnesty documented a total of 377 protest-related deaths, including 56 children. State authorities have officially acknowledged only 202 deaths and falsely attributed most fatalities to "rioters" or "armed terrorists" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Security forces used assault rifles, machine guns, and shotguns loaded with metal pellets at close range, while kinetic impact munitions caused severe long-term physical injuries and loss of vision among survivors.

Disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities

Baluchi and Kurdish protesters and bystanders accounted for 62% of all recorded deaths during protest dispersals, despite representing a much smaller share of Iran's overall population.

Operational guidelines detailed the deployment of Basij militia units and motorcycle patrols of up to 40 vehicles per battalion to maintain street control and prevent anti-government slogans from being written in urban centers.

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  Amnesty says Iran using war to intensify repression

Systemic detention abuses and judicial cover-ups

The investigation documented widespread torture, beatings, rape, and sexual assault against detained protesters, including minors. Internal judicial communications show that prosecutors classified formal rape complaints against IRGC agents as "completely secret" and instructed staff to close files over time without citing security agencies.

When lower courts delivered murder convictions against security personnel, higher authorities intervened to overturn the verdicts, reclassify the killings as unintentional, or reduce prison sentences. State courts also penalized bereaved families by withholding statutory financial compensation and attempting to coerce false television confessions attributing deaths to opposition groups.

The general shutdown followed a joint call by an alliance of Iranian Kurdish political groups for businesses to close and workers to stay home on the anniversary of the 22-year-old’s death in morality police custody, an event that ignited the nationwide Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Tensions were highest in Saqqez, Amini's hometown. Authorities deployed heavy security around the city and the nearby Aichi cemetery, where she is buried.

Local rights group Kurdpa reported that authorities released water from the nearby Cheragh-Veis dam for a third consecutive year to submerge secondary routes to her grave, while installing elevated structures to mount additional surveillance cameras along the main road.

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  Resistance born from Mahsa Amini’s death endures, UN rapporteur says

Strikes and heavy military presence

Videos and messages sent to Iran International showed shuttered markets across Saqqez, Sanandaj, Oshnavieh, Bukan, Paveh, Divandareh, Kermanshah, and Marivan.

Residents and human rights monitors reported riot police, military convoys, and heavily armed units, some equipped with mounted machine guns, patrolling key commercial corridors. Rights group Hana said security forces actively pressured shopkeepers to reopen their businesses and reported a distinct slowdown in internet services in the region.

The shutdown was preceded by a pre-anniversary crackdown. Rights monitor Hengaw reported that at least 20 young people were arrested in Oshnavieh ahead of Wednesday. Additional military units and anti-riot convoys were seen moving from Divandareh into Saqqez on Tuesday evening.

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  A generation shaped by Woman, Life, Freedom refuses to go back

Beyond the western provinces, residents in Isfahan, Rasht, Fouman, Mashhad, and Neyshabur sent reports to Iran International detailing an increased presence of morality patrols, hijab monitors, and plainclothes security personnel enforcing strict dress codes.

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Solidarity behind bars

Prominent political prisoners also backed the strike. Four female prisoners, Zeinab Jalalian, Varishe Moradi, Sakineh Parvaneh, and Matlab Ahmadian, announced a one-day hunger strike on Wednesday in support of the economic shutdown, calling it "the most civil form of expressing protest" in a message distributed by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.

Dayeh Sharifeh, the mother of executed political prisoner Ramin Hosseinpanahi, also endorsed the action, saying: "We keep the pursuit of justice alive; we neither forgive nor forget."

Amini died in September 2022 after being detained in Tehran over alleged violations of Iran's mandatory hijab rules. Her funeral in Saqqez sparked months of widespread anti-government demonstrations that grew into one of the most serious challenges to the Islamic Republic in decades.

A girl who was just entering adolescence when the Woman, Life, Freedom protests began is now approaching adulthood. The past four years have been part of the period in which her understanding of society, government and freedom has taken shape.

Women burning their headscarves, nighttime chants from apartment windows, protests in schools and universities, young people knocking turbans off clerics’ heads and protesters standing up to security forces all became part of the memories that accompanied that generation into adulthood.

One of the most enduring changes is visible on the streets.

Many women now appear without mandatory hijab in streets, universities, cafes, shopping centers and on public transport. Some ride bicycles and motorcycles without covering their hair.

The Islamic Republic has responded to this defiance with arrests and summonses, warning text messages, vehicle seizures, restrictions on bank accounts and SIM cards, surveillance cameras and the closure of businesses.

Human rights organizations say tens of thousands of women have faced security or judicial action over their clothing during the past four years.

Abandoning mandatory hijab has become one of the clearest forms of collective disobedience to emerge from 2022, continuing in parts of society despite the security and legal costs.

As the fourth anniversary of Amini’s death approached, a coalition of Iranian Kurdish political groups called for a general strike on September 16, urging people to close shops and markets and stay away from work.

From Mahsa Amini’s death to prison and executions

Mahsa “Jina” Amini, a 22-year-old woman from Saqqez in Iran’s Kordestan province was detained by the morality police in Tehran on September 13, 2022. She was taken to hospital and died three days later.

Her gravestone bears the words: “Dear Jina, you will not die. Your name will become a symbol.”

Her father, Amjad Amini, wrote on September 14, ahead of the fourth anniversary of her death, that her name had “gone beyond our small home.”

The family, he said, was still waiting for the truth to emerge.

“The sealed secret that you and all the loved ones resting in this earth carry with you will not remain hidden forever,” he wrote.

Amini’s name quickly became a rallying cry for protests that began in Saqqez and Kordestan, spread to Tehran and then swept across Iran. The Kurdish slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” and its Persian equivalent, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” became the uprising’s defining chant.

“Death to the dictator,” “This is the final message, the target is the entire system,” “Poverty, corruption, high prices — we will go on until overthrow,” and “Don’t call it a protest, it’s called a revolution” were also heard on the streets, reflecting the political direction the protests had taken.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic itself became the direct targets of many of the slogans.

The uprising also quickly became a global cause. Artists, athletes, academics, human rights activists and political figures around the world voiced support, carrying Amini’s name and the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom far beyond Iran’s borders.

The authorities answered the protests with lethal force, widespread injuries and mass arrests.

Human rights organizations have put the number of people killed in the uprising at more than 550. Many more were wounded, while shotgun pellets blinded dozens of protesters in one or both eyes.

Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said in May 2025 that more than 90,000 cases had been opened in connection with the 2022 protests, including cases involving schoolchildren, university students and teachers.

The crackdown continued in the courts after large street gatherings subsided.

Execution, imprisonment, flogging, internal exile, fines, travel bans and restrictions on social rights were among the punishments handed down to protesters and activists linked to the uprising.

Mohsen Shekari, Majidreza Rahnavard, Mohammad Mehdi Karami, Mohammad Hosseini, Saleh Mirhashemi, Saeed Yaghoubi, Majid Kazemi, Milad Zohrevand, Mohammad Ghobadlou, Reza Rasaei, Mojahed Korkor, Mehran Bahramian, Mehrab Abdollazadeh, Abdoljalil Shahbakhsh and Aref Khoshkar were among those executed in cases connected to the 2022 protests.

Others remain at risk of execution.

Among them is Ali Zarei Dozdarehsi, who suffered an eye injury from shotgun pellets during the uprising. After spending time in Germany, he returned to Iran, was arrested and was later sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court.

Dozens of other protesters have also received death sentences or still have cases under review.

Golrokh Iraee, Nasim Simiyari, Hamid Ghareh-Hassanlou, Farzaneh Ghareh-Hassanlou and Hossein Mohammadi are among hundreds of political prisoners connected to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising who have faced restrictions in prison, including being denied phone calls, family visits or furlough.

For some, much of the past four years has been spent behind bars, even as Iranian society outside prison has moved through new protests and new changes.

A generation that says ‘We are not going back’

The children and teenagers of 2022 have grown older. Some are now at university, some have entered the workforce and others have left Iran.

What many share is the experience of growing up in a society that lived through one of the most widespread uprisings in the history of the Islamic Republic.

Schools themselves became protest sites in 2022. Students chanted slogans, pulled down images of Islamic Republic officials from classroom walls and girls removed their headscarves.

Universities saw weeks of demonstrations, sit-ins and confrontations with security forces.

For a generation that witnessed those scenes during formative years, politics became tied to the street, the school, the university and everyday life.

German-American political thinker Hannah Arendt linked freedom to the human capacity to begin something new. In her thought, political action emerges among others in the public sphere, and revolutions are among the moments when the possibility of a “new beginning” becomes visible.

For the teenagers of 2022, an experience of that kind unfolded on a mass scale before their eyes: people who often did not know one another chanted the same slogans, supported each other and joined collective action in schools, universities, neighborhoods and streets.

Four years later, this generation lives in a society where repression continues. But the experience of 2022 has not been erased from its political memory.

What Woman, Life, Freedom gave the protests that followed

The 2022 uprising did not topple the Islamic Republic, but it changed the language and horizons of protest.

Woman, Life, Freedom entered Iran’s political vocabulary alongside slogans calling for the overthrow and end of the Islamic Republic.

Women stood at the center of a nationwide uprising. School students emerged as a visible force in protest, and acts of disobedience moved from demonstrations into everyday life.

Some of the behaviors that took shape during those months continued in the years that followed.

Rosa Luxemburg, the Marxist revolutionary and theorist, viewed the defeats of revolutionary movements as links in a historical chain that could help prepare the ground for future victories.

After the failed January 1919 uprising in Berlin, she treated the experience and political understanding gained through defeat as part of a revolutionary movement’s accumulated strength.

The protests that followed 2022 began from a point that Woman, Life, Freedom had already reached. Opposition to the Islamic Republic as a whole, and demands for its overthrow, remained present in later protest slogans.

January 2026 offered one of the clearest examples.

Protests that began over economic grievances rapidly spread across the country, with political slogans against the Islamic Republic becoming a major feature.

Estimates of those killed ranged from the government’s official figure of 3,117 to more than 36,500 in Iran International’s reporting. Tens of thousands were wounded, while around 100,000 people were arrested, summoned or interrogated.

For the generation that had experienced 2022, January 2026 became a second encounter with a nationwide uprising and a bloody crackdown within only a few years.

A generation carrying the memory of several generations

Iran’s teenagers and young adults now stand at the end of a much longer history of protest and repression: women’s protests against compulsory hijab in March 1979, the executions of the 1980s, the July 1999 university dormitory crackdown, the 2009 Green Movement, the protests of January 2018 and the bloody November 2019 crackdown.

Many learned about those events through their families, photographs, books and news reports.

Woman, Life, Freedom and the January 2026 protests, however, belong to their own lived experience.

That distinction has helped shape this generation’s political memory.

Images of protesting women, schoolgirls, young people in the streets, families demanding justice and political prisoners now sit alongside images of those killed, wounded and executed.

A girl who was just entering adolescence in September 2022 is now approaching adulthood carrying memories of Amini, protest, repression and disobedience — memories now layered alongside the stories earlier generations carried from March 1979, the 1980s, July 1999, the Green Movement and November 2019.

Four years after Amini’s death, Woman, Life, Freedom remains part of this generation’s memory: in the school and the street, in experiences of repression and defiance, and in the picture of freedom and Iran’s future that it carries into adulthood.

Above all, this generation has seen that the path to political change in Iran runs through the street, collective action and effective organization.

The sisters were 19 when they were arrested after joining January’s nationwide uprising in Isfahan. They turned 20 behind bars and remain imprisoned in Isfahan’s Dowlatabad Prison.

Taraneh has been sentenced to death, while Romina received prison sentences totaling 36 years. They were among 16 defendants tried by Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court in the Shohada Square case, 10 of whom received death sentences.

Masoud Nourmohammadi, the twins’ cousin who lives in the United States, told Iran International that prison authorities have recently begun denying Taraneh food, forcing her to rely on leftovers shared by other prisoners.

He said Taraneh was told the treatment was connected to his efforts to raise awareness about the sisters’ case outside Iran.

“They said your cousin has been talking outside of Iran,” Nourmohammadi said, recounting what Taraneh was told.

“This is the cost you have to pay.”

Nourmohammadi said he has also received daily death threats since speaking publicly about his cousins.

He said messages sent to him include his address and information about his family and warn him to remain silent.

“This is your address. This is your house. This is information about your family. We know where you live,” he said, recounting the threats. “Stop talking or something’s going to happen to your kids.”

Four months without knowing where they were

The sisters’ ordeal began after they joined protests around Isfahan’s Shohada Square during the nationwide uprising in January.

Taraneh and Romina were working at a shoe shop in the area when they closed the store and joined protesters outside, according to Nourmohammadi.

“They came out. They chanted,” he said. “The bravest Iranian people came out that night.”

About a week later, masked security forces broke into the home of a friend where Taraneh was staying, according to the family.

“They broke down the doors,” Nourmohammadi said. “They had masks on. They did not show any warrants.”

He said security forces bound Taraneh’s hands and feet, placed a bag over her head and took her away.

Romina was arrested separately at the family home. Nourmohammadi said security forces raided the house in the middle of the night and took her away in similar circumstances.

For roughly four months, their family did not know where either sister was being held.

Their mother, who raised Taraneh and Romina on her own, searched hospitals, courts and prisons for her only children.

“They were searching all of the hospitals, the courts, the prisons,” Nourmohammadi said.

Family members spent hours outside prisons demanding information, he said.

“No one answered them.”

For Nourmohammadi, thousands of miles away in the United States, the uncertainty was compounded by Iran’s internet blackout, which made communicating with relatives inside the country extremely difficult.

Eventually, his aunt received a phone call telling her the twins were being held at Dowlatabad Prison and that she could visit them.

She was given an appointment roughly two weeks later.

When she finally saw her daughters after months of not knowing where they were, Nourmohammadi said she could barely recognize them.

“Their faces were swollen, bruises all over their faces, their body was malnourished, they were limping,” he said.

“They had basically no hair on their head.”

It was only when the sisters began speaking that their mother realized the young women in front of her were her daughters.

“God, it was hard,” he said. “She only could recognize them when they started speaking ... she recognized them through their voices.”

Nourmohammadi said the sisters spent their first four months in solitary confinement.

‘The only evidence is the confession’

The family says both sisters were subjected to severe physical and psychological abuse during interrogation and coerced into confessing.

Before her arrest, Taraneh worked as an equestrian trainer and dreamed of opening her own riding academy.

Years earlier, she had suffered a serious horseback-riding injury that required orthopedic plates and screws in her leg. Her family alleges interrogators deliberately targeted the existing injury and repeatedly struck her damaged leg.

Romina had undergone stomach surgery before her arrest and was experiencing stomach problems around the time of the protests, according to Nourmohammadi.

The family also alleges that interrogators exploited the twins’ close relationship to pressure Taraneh into confessing.

The sisters had rarely been apart. During detention, relatives say, Taraneh could hear Romina screaming.

Interrogators then threatened to rape Romina unless Taraneh signed a confession, according to the family.

Taraneh later told the court that her confession had been extracted under torture, according to reports on the case.

Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran have documented allegations that defendants in the Shohada Square case were tortured and coerced into confessing, as well as serious violations of their due-process rights.

Nourmohammadi said there was no substantive evidence against his cousins beyond confessions he says were obtained through torture.

“There is basically zero evidence on the case,” he said. “The only evidence that they have is the confession.”

The Shohada Square case

Taraneh and Romina were prosecuted alongside 14 other defendants over events surrounding the January protests in Isfahan.

Ten of the 16 defendants, including Taraneh, received death sentences.

The defendants faced charges including moharebeh, or “waging war against God,” destruction of public property, assembly and collusion against national security and propaganda against the state.

Human Rights Watch and the Boroumand Center said the prosecution relied heavily on confessions that defendants said were obtained under torture. They also documented restrictions on access to lawyers and other due-process violations.

The rights groups said defendants were accused of involvement in incidents in which two people died, but none of the 16 was charged with murder.

They also reported that defense lawyers sought to introduce mobile-phone videos they said could exonerate defendants, but the material was not admitted as evidence.

Crackdown continues beyond the streets

The mass demonstrations that swept Iran in January are no longer visible on the same scale, but the crackdown that followed has continued in prisons and courtrooms.

Protesters arrested during the uprising continue to face lengthy prison terms, death sentences and execution.

At least 29 people arrested in connection with the January protests had been executed by the end of August, according to Human Rights Watch and the Boroumand Center.

Amnesty International said in July that it had identified 60 people, including three children, at risk of execution in connection with the protests. Iran Human Rights has reported that more than 70 protesters were at risk of execution in Isfahan Prison alone.

The actual number could be substantially higher.

The crackdown has also extended to lawyers representing protesters. The Boroumand Center documented the arrests of at least 19 lawyers in the month following the January crackdown, while other lawyers taking protest-related cases have faced threats of arrest, renewed prosecution or disbarment.

For Nourmohammadi, what is happening to his cousins shows that the crackdown did not end when large protests disappeared from Iran’s streets.

“The crisis didn’t stop at January 8th and 9th,” he said. “The massacre didn’t stop there. It is still continuing and it’s happening right now in the prisons.”

“These kids are the best versions of Iranians,” he added. “They’re the bravest, brightest ... Iranian kids, and they don’t deserve that.”