The deadly crackdown on the December 2025-January 2026 anti-regime protests saw many Iranians killed, tracked or detained. The US-Israel war on Iran has intensified the repression, but it has not stopped families from trying to trace their missing loved ones or from seeking justice for people who have disappeared into prisons and juvenile correction centres across the country.
His family and friends are searching everywhere for him. The official list of detainees does not feature his name. He’s not recorded among the victims identified by the Iranian Legal Medicine Organisation, the forensic department under the country’s justice ministry. Morteza Ebrahimi, 35, has been missing since January 8, a black day for many families across Iran, when the crackdown on anti-regime protests reached a brutal, bloody peak.
That night, as internet access was cut across the country, the authorities unleashed hell on the streets of some Tehran neighbourhoods. Special units opened fire with military-grade weapons on protesters in the heart of the Iranian capital. Several thousand people were killed.
In the days that followed, families set out to search for their missing loved ones. Many converged on the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre, a morgue in Tehran’s southern suburbs where dozens of bodies were brought in by refrigerated lorries.
But there was no news, no confirmation, no closure for Ebrahimi’s loved ones. The young man had simply disappeared in the black hole of Iranian people missing after they took to the streets in anti-regime protests between December 2025 and January 2026.
The difficult task of counting the victims
After months of internet blackout – first intermittently during the January protest crackdown and then a near total cut after the US and Israel launched the Iran war on February 28 – Iranians now have a “drip-feed” of internet access. And with it, a backlog of desperate posts is once again flooding the Iranian cyberspace.
Read moreReconnected? Iranians say only 'drip-feed' internet has returned after shutdown
“With the outbreak of the war on Saturday, February 28, accompanied by widespread internet cutoffs and disruptions, accessing information about the status of detainees and prisoners has become significantly more difficult, further compounding the anxiety of families,” noted IranWire, a collective news site run by professional Iranian journalists in the diaspora and citizen journalists inside Iran.
The war broke out just a few weeks after the latest protests, which were initially driven by deteriorating living conditions, before evolving into a widespread movement challenging the regime. The conflict has also disrupted efforts by several Iranian NGOs outside the country to document the scale of the crackdown.
In a comprehensive report published in late February, the Virginia-based NGO, Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), recorded 6,488 confirmed and verified deaths of protesters. An additional 11,744 cases remain “under review and are not included in confirmed totals", the report noted.
Compiling an accurate death toll remains difficult, as the crackdown that began in January continues to claim new victims several months after the protests.
Using the cover of ‘wartime conditions’
On Monday, June 1, Mehrdad Mohammadinia and Ashkan Maleki, two protesters arrested during the January rallies in Tehran, were hanged at dawn. The Iranian judiciary had sentenced them to death for “participating in operational activities against national security” and “collaborating with hostile governments”.
Their executions are part of a wave of sentences that continue at a steady pace. Dozens of protesters arrested during the December-January uprisings have been charged with attacking security forces or trespassing on military installations and sentenced to death. Some have already been executed.
Human rights organisations contest the legitimacy and fairness of the rushed trials. “Iranian authorities are using the cover of what they call 'wartime conditions' to intensify their repression of dissent through mass arbitrary arrests, accelerated grossly unfair judicial proceedings, politically motivated executions, harsh prison sentences, and asset confiscations,” noted Amnesty International.
Teenagers behind bars
The detainees also include minors. In a report on the repression of schoolchildren, the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran states that hundreds of children have been arbitrarily detained, subjected to enforced disappearance, and denied access to their families and legal counsel. The NGO reported that at least 216 children had been killed during the protests.
Some teenagers remain behind bars today, such as Nima Araban, 17, who was arrested during the January protests in Naein, in Isfahan province. He has been detained for more than four months in the Isfahan Juvenile Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre. The teenager was arrested at the same time as Abbas Akbari Feyzabadi, who was hanged on May 25.
“Nima Araban is currently 17 years and 9 months old and is approximately three months away from reaching the legal age of adulthood. Given the execution of his co-defendant, concerns among Nima’s family and relatives have intensified regarding the possibility of a heavy sentence being issued against him after he reaches legal adulthood,” a source close to the case told the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
IranWire also reports on the case of Diana Taherabadi, a 16-year-old high school student, who was arrested at her home in late January and is being held at the Kachoui Juvenile Rehabilitation and Correctional Centre.
“Sources close to the student's family have reported that confessions were extracted from her during her detention, a claim that has not been independently verified. However, during her judicial hearing, she rejected the charges brought against her and stated that she played no role in the matters attributed to her,” the media outlet reported.
These cases contradict statements by Iran’s Education Ministry spokesperson Ali Farhadi, who told the official ISNA news agency in early February that “thanks to the Iranian education minister’s oversight, no student remained in detention from the very first days of the unrest".
Families pay tribute to their dead
Since the US and Israel launched a full-scale war on Iran with the killing of the country’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the assassinations of top officials, the regime’s paranoia over informants and collaborators has multiplied. And with it, the repression under the wartime security conditions has exploded.
On March 13, the Revolutionary Guards warned that any new mobilisation against the government would result in a response “more severe” than that of January. “Today, the enemy, unable to achieve its military objectives on the ground, is once again seeking to instil terror and provoke riots,” they stated.
Despite the risks, families continue to demand justice and pay tribute to the victims of the state’s crackdown. Last week, relatives of Pajman Norooz Rajabi gathered at the spot where the 27-year-old athlete was killed by security forces on January 8 in Tonekabon, a northern Iranian city, formerly known as Shahsavar, located on the Caspian coast.
In a courageous display of grief and remembrance, a small gathering of mourners – some wearing T-shirts with Rajabi’s photograph – threw flower petals on the spot as one family member held a framed photograph of the deceased.
As the petals landed on the street, some mourners ululated, others raised a wordless cry of defiance. And as the evening traffic sped past the tiny gathering on the side of the road, some drivers honked, a reminder that a collective memory outlives Iran’s youth who were slain on those traumatic days and nights.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
