Human rights group Amnesty International released a damning 80-page report that concluded Iran’s regime tortured and killed its own citizens during nationwide protests in 2019.
The report was released on Wednesday and documents the November 2019 protests, which began after fuel-price hikes but morphed into an expression of broader discontent with the ruling Iranian government headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. The rights group found that Iranian authorities tortured men, women, and children.
The report concluded that the Iranian government was responsible for “widespread patterns of serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, and flagrant breaches of the right to a fair trial.”
“Most frequently, victims recounted being hooded or blindfolded, punched, kicked, flogged, beaten with sticks, rubber hosepipes, batons and cables, suspended and/or forced into holding painful stress positions for prolonged periods, deprived of sufficient food and potable water, and placed in prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks or even months,” the report said.
It also found information that Iran’s methods of torture included “forcible extraction of the nails from fingers or toes, pepper spraying, forced administration of chemical substances, electric shocks, waterboarding, and mock executions.”
Interrogators also sexually abused detainees, according to the rights group, which alleged that protesters “sustained sexual verbal abuse, pepper spraying the genital area, and administering electric shocks to the testicles.”
Amnesty International interviewed dozens of victims and witnesses of the Iranian crackdown on protesters in November 2019. It also set up telephone lines where hundreds of people called, texted, and sent photos and videos from the protests.
Amnesty International said it compiled the names of more than 500 protesters who were subjected to criminal investigations due to their involvement in the demonstrations. Of those, the human rights group said at least three have been sentenced to death after “grossly unfair” trials.
The regime itself has said that some 200,000 Iranians took part in the November demonstrations, and the head of Parliament’s national security committee said at least 7,000 were arrested, according to Reuters.
Amnesty International found proof that at least 304 protesters were killed by Iranian security forces, largely from gunshot wounds, but said that the true death toll is “likely much higher.” Thousands of more protesters were wounded during the demonstrations.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading dissident group working toward regime change, puts its tally of those killed in the protests at 1,500, a figure echoed by U.S. officals, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the NCRI, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that there has been far more abuse than was able to be compiled by Amnesty International.
“What has been reported about the arrest, imprisonment, torture, and murder of the participants in the November 2019 uprising in Iran is only the tip of the iceberg. The vicious tortures inflicted on those arrested during the protests are outrageous,” Jafarzadeh said. “Now is the time for the long-overdue accountability for the perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Iran.”
The report comes as tensions between the United States and Iran continue to build. The U.S. is trying to institute a “snapback” of United Nations sanctions against Iran. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal stated that signatory nations could reinstitute sanctions if Iran substantially violated the terms of the agreement, although because the U.S. withdrew from the pact in 2018, the move to snapback sanctions has faced criticism by some in the international community, including Russia and China.
Earlier this summer, the U.S. State Department branded Iran as the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism” in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism. Since withdrawing from the nuclear deal, the U.S. has imposed crippling sanctions against Iran in a “maximum pressure” campaign designed to squeeze the Middle Eastern country into submission. Iran has responded by taking provocative actions in the region, including bolstering proxies and militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the State Department for comment about this report.
