GENEVA, 24 Jan. - (ANA) - Disturbing details continued to emerge on Friday about Iran’s State-led crackdown against mass protests, while UN rights chief Volker Türk expressed deep concern that demonstrators could be executed.

 

Addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Mr. Türk said that although the “killing on the streets of Iran may have subsided…the brutality continues”.

 

He said that violent repression did not solve any of Iran’s problems but instead created conditions for further violations, instability and bloodshed.

 

“We have indications that the security forces made mass arrests in several cities, even pursuing injured people into hospitals, and detaining lawyers, human rights defenders, activists, and ordinary civilians,” he told diplomats.

 

 

 

 

“The Tehran Prosecutor’s Office has reportedly opened criminal cases against athletes, actors, people involved in the movie industry, and the owners of cafes, on charges of supporting the protests,” Mr. Türk continued. 

 

Protests erupted across Iran on 28 December in response to the collapse of the national currency, soaring inflation and worsening living conditions.

 

Also speaking at the Council, former international prosecutor Payam Akhavan described how one protester pretended to be dead in a body-bag for three days until his parents found him. 

 

The civil society representative said that parents looking for their relatives usually started at hospitals, where “many of the wounded (protesters) have been abducted and killed”. 

 

Others have been forced to sign confessions which blame imaginary “terrorists” for the murder of their children, Mr. Akhavan maintained.

 

He cited a medical report circulating among Iranian doctors that 16,500 people had been killed during the demonstrations. “The number increases by the day, because the killings haven’t stopped,” he said.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/24 January 2026 - - -