Iran Human Rights announced in a report published on September 17, 2026, that it had documented the identities of more than 4,200 people it said were killed during protests that took place across the country in January. It said the list was compiled after months of gathering information, cross-checking sources, and examining documents and evidence linked to the victims.
Documented toll includes women and children
According to the report, the documented toll included at least 420 women and 281 people under the age of 18, including 25 children under 14. The organization said the youngest recorded victim was a four-and-a-half-month-old infant, stressing that the published figure represents the minimum number of cases it was able to verify, not a final toll.
The organization attributed the difficulty of reaching a comprehensive toll to internet and communications outages, pressure on victims’ families, and restrictions on access to hospitals and forensic medicine. Iranian authorities had previously reported 3,117 deaths, while the organization said its review showed that the government list was incomplete, noting that names appearing in local lists and state media were absent from the list published by the president’s office.
Killings concentrated on January 8 and 9
The organization said the files and testimonies it collected revealed similar patterns in the use of lethal force, including direct fire at crowds, targeting vital parts of people’s bodies, shooting at fleeing people, and the use of snipers.
Conflicting accounts of responsibility for the violence
Amnesty International also reported, based on verified video footage and witness testimonies, that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij, police, and individuals in civilian clothing opened fire on protesters. Iranian officials, by contrast, repeatedly blamed “terrorist elements,” the United States, and Israel for most of the violence and deaths.
Ali Larijani, then secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, described the protests on the evening of January 9 as “terrorist tensions in the cities,” saying that the armed forces intervened to “end the sedition.” President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later presented similar accounts, comparing the protesters’ actions to the methods of ISIS.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights, said the collected evidence provides a “serious basis” for investigating the killings within the framework of “crimes against humanity,” calling for those who issued and carried out the orders to be held accountable. The report also referred to the pursuit and arrest of wounded people, pressure on medical workers and the families of those killed, and restrictions on burial ceremonies after the protests subsided.
According to the organization, at least 29 people were executed over their alleged connection to the January protests, and it verified the identities of 100 protesters who had been sentenced to death.
In a separate annex, it listed 324 additional cases, each based on a single unofficial source, and said that information gathering and verification of names would continue.
