The Two Nights.

What the witnesses described.

A physician interviewed by the Center for Human Rights in Iran from a hospital in Isfahan described eighteen consecutive head-trauma surgeries in a single night. Blood pooled in the gutter outside the operating theatre. Body counts were altered on hospital files. Corpses were taken from morgues at 3am by Basij agents and buried in unmarked rows; families who came looking were threatened with secret burials if they refused to recant.

Time, citing two senior Iranian health officials on 25 January 2026: “They ran out of body bags. They used semi-trailer trucks instead of ambulances.”

In Rasht, IRGC and Basij forces set fire to the historic covered bazaar after blocking the exits, then opened live fire on civilians fleeing the smoke. HRANA documented at least 392 dead in Rasht alone; Iran HRM recorded up to 3,000. Survivors described “finishing shots” administered to the wounded.

“We were walking in blood.”

Iranian doctors and nurses, speaking to Le Monde on condition of anonymity, described emergency wards where the floor could no longer be cleared between patients. One physician at a Tehran public hospital said staff worked through three consecutive shifts removing bullets from skulls and chests; the corridors filled with the wounded faster than orderlies could carry them out.

“We were walking in blood,” a junior surgeon told the paper. “The water from the mops came out red. They brought children. They brought boys whose faces were destroyed.” Hospital administrators were ordered, on pain of dismissal, to record protest casualties under unrelated diagnostic codes — “car accident,” “fall from height,” “unknown cause.” The body bags ran out on the second night.

Outside the hospital walls, IRGC and Basij units staged the aftermath of the Rasht bazaar fire — exits welded shut, then live fire on those who tried to escape. The image below is what the bazaar's surviving traders found at first light. Washington Post · Iran HRM.

The faces behind the figures.

Amnesty International published the photographs of twenty-eight of the named dead from the first ten days of January 2026 — a collage that the Iranian state had spent weeks trying to scrub from the open internet. Each face is a small refusal of the regime's preferred ending, in which protesters become statistics and statistics become rumour.

The collage is not exhaustive. HRANA and Iran Human Rights were still verifying new names every day at the time of writing — and the regime was still arresting families who tried to publish them.

How the operation unfolded.

According to multiple eyewitnesses, video, and images compiled by Iran Human Rights Monitor, large crowds had moved toward Rasht's city centre and into the historic bazaar on the evening of 8 January. Security forces first dispersed the crowd with tear gas. As people persisted, heavily armed units intervened — blocking exits and igniting fires inside the covered market.

As smoke and flame spread through the alleys, civilians sheltering in shops were forced to flee. At that point, security forces opened up with live ammunition and shotgun pellets on those running from the smoke. Witnesses said many of those shot were unarmed; some were killed by what survivors described as finishing shots after they had already fallen.

Footage recorded that evening captures continuous gunfire and reports of multiple casualties within minutes. Others described being trapped in dead-end alleys as the fire advanced, receiving no response to calls for emergency services, and being shot from behind once they made it back into the open street.

Visual evidence of a deliberate assault.

Photographs from the morning of 9 January show burnt-out structures, charred shop fronts, and corridors of destruction running along entire bazaar arcades — a pattern consistent with intentional, accelerant-aided ignition rather than a single accidental fire. Iran HRM notes that the deliberate use of fire in a civilian gathering place, the blocking of escape routes, and the firing of live ammunition at unarmed individuals constitute grave violations of international human rights law — the right to life and the prohibition of cruel and inhuman treatment.

Carried out in a widespread or systematic manner, the same body warned, such acts may amount to crimes against humanity under international legal standards. What occurred in Rasht's historic bazaar was not an isolated clash; the available evidence indicates a deliberate operation in which civilians were directly targeted.

Mahsa Sarli, 12 — criminalising childhood.

On 24 February 2026, judicial authorities — while denying any death sentence — confirmed that Mahsa Sarli, twelve years old, was being held on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “membership in a group with the intent to disrupt national security.” Both charges, under Iran's own 2013 Islamic Penal Code, are unassignable to a child of her age: individuals between 9 and 15 do not bear adult criminal responsibility, and only educational measures may be applied.

Her detention also violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Iran is a signatory — Article 37 (no arbitrary detention of children), Article 40 (specialised juvenile justice), Articles 13 and 15 (freedom of expression and assembly), and the over-arching principle of the best interests of the child. By Iran's own Code of Criminal Procedure, a child must be transferred immediately to a Juvenile Prosecution Office; interrogation by security agents and trial in a Revolutionary Court are explicitly prohibited.

On 23 February, the Judiciary spokesperson described detained protesters under the age of eighteen as people who “committed criminal acts and remain in detention while their cases are processed” — a labelling, before any conviction, that violates the presumption of innocence enshrined in Article 14 of the ICCPR.

The Kiani-Vafa brothers — justice sacrificed for speed.

On 23 February 2026, Asadollah Jafari, Chief Justice of Isfahan Province, denied that death sentences had been issued against Saman, Arman, and Rahman Kiani-Vafa — three brothers swept up in the January protests — and praised the local judiciary for processing “the cases of rioters with speed, precision, and decisiveness.”

That insistence on speed in capital cases is itself the violation. Article 14(3) of the ICCPR guarantees the accused “adequate time and facilities for the preparation of a defence”: time to study the file, consult counsel, prepare evidence, and call witnesses. The UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly held that capital cases must meet the highest fair-trial standards — and that no exception applies, even in “security cases” or declared emergencies.

The pattern is consistent. Iran HRM documents coordinated denials across dozens of state-affiliated outlets on 24 — 25 February: a strategic attempt to saturate the media space, quiet international outcry, and complete an unfair trial in silence during the “investigation” phase. Holding defendants in that phase for prolonged periods — without independent counsel or access to case details — itself constitutes arbitrary detention under Article 9 of the ICCPR. For minors, Articles 37 and 40 of the CRC make the violation doubly grave.

Inside the protest cities.

The cities themselves do not feature in Western broadcast coverage. Most of what the world saw came through diaspora windows: a Berlin Tiergarten, a London Trafalgar Square, a Washington Lafayette Park. The cities below were the ones being hollowed out — Neyshabur, Rasht, Marvdasht, Azna, Javanrud, Mashhad, Kermanshah — places without correspondent bureaux, where the bandwidth was throttled to dial-up and the only camera was the phone in the pocket of the boy who would be dead by morning.

“They came back with their cousin in a sheet. The shop where he worked is still open. Nobody can put their name in the window.” — testimony collected by CHRI, Isfahan, 16 January 2026.