IRAN: THOUSANDS DETAINED OVER PROTESTS AT RISK OF TORTURE

Dear Mr. Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei,

I am concerned that the thousands of individuals, including children, arrested in connection with the nationwide protests that began on December 28, 2025, are at grave risk of enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, deaths in custody, and prolonged imprisonment and/or arbitrary executions following grossly unfair trials. Amnesty International has gathered evidence that those arrested have been subjected to enforced disappearance as well as to torture and other ill-treatment during arrest and in detention including beatings, sexual violence, threats of summary executions, and deliberate denial of adequate food, water and medical care.

Those detained risk being convicted and sentenced to prolonged imprisonment and the death penalty on the basis of forced “confessions” extracted under torture or other ill-treatment. State media has aired propaganda videos of detained protesters, including children, making forced “confessions” of committing various offenses during the protests. Public statements by senior officials are alarming, smearing protesters as “rioters” and “terrorists” and insisting that they be “tried and punished as quickly as possible” with “no leniency”.

I urge you to immediately release all those detained solely for exercising their human rights including the right of peaceful assembly; to protect detainees from torture and other ill-treatment; to disclose the fate and whereabouts of all individuals forcibly disappeared; and to grant access to their lawyers, families and any medical care they require. I further urge you to immediately quash all convictions and death sentences, to refrain from seeking further death sentences, and to ensure that anyone charged with a recognizable criminal offense is tried in proceedings meeting international fair trial standards without recourse to the death penalty.

Yours sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]