The death toll continues to climb as the Iranian theocracy unleashes its security troops and militias against civilian demonstrators, with some reports claiming that over ten thousand people have been killed.
Regime judges are threatening swift trials and executions for detainees, and human rights activists say some prisoners have been tortured and forced to sign confessions.
The chief of the Iranian judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, warned on Wednesday that the regime’s body count would be increased by rapid trials and executions for anyone who dares to join the protests. His remarks were widely broadcast by Iranian state media to intimidate the population.
“If we want to do a job, we should do it now. If we want to do something, we have to do it quickly. If it becomes late, two months, three months later, it doesn’t have the same effect. If we want to do something, we have to do that fast,” Mohseni-Ejei said to explain his enthusiasm for death sentences with minimal due process.
More information is leaking out of Iran thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink making its services free for Iranians. Security troops are reportedly raiding homes across Iran to confiscate Starlink devices. The regime shut down the Internet and mobile phone services last Thursday, but on Tuesday it began allowing limited outgoing international phone calls.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) estimated 2,417 dead as of Wednesday, including 12 children, 10 bystanders who were not even participating in protests, and 147 people affiliated with the Iranian government.
HRANA added that 18,400 people have been detained, an especially grim statistic given Mohseni-Ejei’s threats of mass executions. The group said these estimates were “conservative,” given the difficulty of getting reliable information out of Iran.
Another estimate from Iran Human Rights (IHR) included 734 confirmed killings of protesters, but the group said that number was “based on information received from fewer than half of the country’s provinces and fewer than 10% of Iran’s hospitals,” so “the real number of those killed is likely in the thousands.”
Sources in and out of Iran told CBS News on Tuesday that the true death toll was over 12,000, and possibly as high as 20,000.
Several other sources said a death toll of between 10,000 and 12,000 was credible, given photos and videos trickling out of Iran that show hundreds of people dumped into open-air morgues with gunshot wounds.
One of CBS’s sources said regime agents are forcing their way into hospitals and terrorizing medical staffers into handing over the names of patients receiving treatment for protest-related injuries, an ominous sign that more arrests — and executions — will be coming if the Iranian theocracy wins its battle for survival.
HRANA also accused the Iranian regime of torturing prisoners to extract forced confessions, which were circulated widely by state media to make it look as if the protests were foreign-controlled sabotage instead of a sincere uprising.
Almost a hundred such confessions have been broadcast by state media over the past two weeks, representing an unprecedented surge in Tehran’s use of the sinister tactic. By comparison, Iranian state media broadcast about 37 suspicious confessions from prisoners facing the death penalty for sedition during the massive “Women, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022.
“These rights violations compound on top of each other and lead to horrible outcomes. This is a pattern that’s been implemented by the regime time and time again,” HRANA deputy director Skylar Thompson said.
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