After the January massacre, the Islamic Republic accelerated executions, mass arrests, and systematic torture—including sexual violence—into a governing strategy designed to instill terror.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has transformed the violent suppression of the January protests into an active policy of rule based on the “engineering of terror.” Moving beyond street killings, it has shifted toward rushed judicial executions, systematic torture, and mass arrests. This trajectory has been accompanied by more than 190 to 250 confirmed executions from 18 Dey 1404 (January 8, 2026) to mid-Bahman 1404 (early February 2026).
Based on documented reports by international human rights organizations and independent monitoring bodies, since the start of the January massacre on January 8 and 9, 2026, judicial executions carried out by the Islamic Republic’s judiciary have continued with unprecedented speed and scale. These executions—often carried out under the cover of “ordinary” charges (such as drug-related offenses)—have, in the context of violent repression, become a tool for public intimidation and for clearing prisons by rapidly executing those already on death row.
Accelerated Executions: 190 to 250 Cases in January–February 2026
Confirmed figures, almost certainly lower than the real number due to internet shutdowns during part of the period and extensive censorship, show that between 1January 8 to February 19, 2026 at least 190 to 250 executions were recorded by various sources, including HRANA and the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
In February 2026 alone (through mid-month), at least 123 confirmed executions were recorded, indicating that the upward trend continued. Since the beginning of March 2025 to the present, the total number of reported executions has exceeded 2,300—an especially significant portion concentrated in recent months.
Rushed and non-public executions are among the most alarming features of this period. Many sentences are carried out without informing defense lawyers or families, and within compressed timeframes. Although most cases are officially labeled with charges such as “drug trafficking,” the sudden surge in numbers amid protests, and the widespread transfer of prisoners to solitary confinement prior to execution, point to a planned policy of rapid elimination.
Threats against protesters and political prisoners are another defining feature of this period. Cases such as the execution of Ali Rahbar in Mashhad (which the judiciary denied), and death sentences for young detainees such as Amirhossein Ghaderzadeh (19 years old) and Javid Khalis (a conscript who refused to obey an order to shoot), indicate a serious danger for all those arrested during the protests. International pressure has so far prevented the implementation of some death sentences.
During this same period, protests inside prisons have continued. The “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign in 56 prisons across the country, and collective hunger strikes by political prisoners, reflect the scale of the crisis inside Iran’s detention system.
Systematic Sexual Violence: A Tool of Terror and Torture
Sexual violence in the Islamic Republic’s repressive apparatus functions as a tool of collective punishment, humiliation, and the production of deep social fear. Given severe censorship and internet shutdowns, what is reported represents only part of the reality.
According to documented and corroborated reports by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as networks such as the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, sexual violence has been used by Islamic Republic security forces during the nationwide protests of the January uprising as a systematic instrument of repression and torture. These acts are reported to aim at producing terror, humiliating detainees, breaking protesters’ morale, and extracting forced confessions.
Documented cases indicate an organized pattern:
In Kermanshah, security forces reportedly assaulted detainees during transfer—among them a 16-year-old—striking sensitive parts of their bodies with batons and subjecting them to sexual abuse.
In Rasht, agents reportedly raided the home of Amirhossein Ghaderzadeh’s family (a detained young man), forced him and his two teenage sisters to strip, and sexually assaulted them under the pretext of “checking pellet wounds.” Amirhossein Ghaderzadeh’s fate after this incident remains unknown.
A recurring pattern of threats of gang rape, staged executions, injections of unknown substances, and holding detainees—especially teenagers and women—in unofficial detention sites under IRGC control has created conditions that facilitate enforced disappearances and further sexual violence.
According to some horrific, unverified speculation circulating on social media, the bodies of some killed women were found bearing signs of rape, removal of the uterus, and deliberate burning. In many cases, families have reportedly been forced to pay money or pledge silence in order to receive bodies.
An Expanding Context: Mass Arrests and Enforced Disappearance
According to figures collected by independent bodies, at least 24,000 people were arrested during these protests, many of them children and teenagers. This pattern of violence echoes methods used in past crackdowns which were previously documented by Amnesty International and UN bodies.
Families, activists, and journalists have told Amnesty International that authorities often refuse to provide any information about where detainees are being held. Such practices constitute enforced disappearance, which is recognized as a crime under international law.
Some detainees are held in official prisons. But reports indicate that others are being held in military bases, warehouses, or unregistered sites. Detention without official registration sharply increases the risk of torture and other forms of abuse.
By extending the mandate of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, the UN Human Rights Council is examining these reports as evidence of possible international crimes.
A Global Call to Save Political Prisoners
On February 2, 2026, the Narges Mohammadi Foundation issued a statement describing an urgent and catastrophic human rights situation in Iran following the bloody suppression of the January protests, and called on the international community to act to save political prisoners’ lives. Referring to the illegal detention and alarming conditions of Narges Mohammadi—Nobel Peace Prize laureate—whom the statement presents as a symbol of systematic repression, it argues that the Islamic Republic is committing organized crimes against the people of Iran through suffocation, torture, executions, and enforced disappearances.
The statement calls on human rights organizations, activists, and the global public to focus on political prisoners in detention centers and take practical steps to save their lives—especially those at risk of execution; those for whom Islamic Republic officials, and supporters or associates of the dictatorship, are calling for state executions; their families; and all those who have been illegally detained, disappeared, or killed.
Narges Mohammadi’s Renewed Detention and Hunger Strike
Narges Mohammadi, human rights activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was violently re-arrested on December 12, 2025 during a security raid at a memorial ceremony in Mashhad for the human rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi.
From Monday February 2, 2026, she began a hunger strike to protest her continued detention, poor holding conditions, and the severing of contact with her family. Mohammadi was able to make only one brief call to her brother on December 14, 2025. After that, further phone contact was reportedly made conditional on accepting “security rules” which—according to her supporting foundation—effectively restrict free expression and force the prisoner into silence. She has refused these conditions and has chosen to forgo phone calls.
Her family, citing a history of heart problems, high blood pressure, and chronic spinal issues, has warned about deterioration in her physical condition and stressed that deprivation of medical care may have irreparable consequences. They describe this as a violation of international human rights obligations. At the same time, reports have emerged of security pressure on her relatives to prevent news from being published. This hunger strike began while Sepideh Gholian and Javad Alikordi—two other detainees arrested at the memorial ceremony—remain in temporary detention.
Mohammadi has a long history of imprisonment. She has been arrested 13 times and has received sentences totaling more than 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.
