r/IranScope

Navid Afkari was a 27-year-old Iranian wrestler, a national medalist who dreamed of competing at the Olympics. In 2018 he took part in protests in Shiraz over Iran's economic crisis. Weeks later, he was arrested and accused of murdering a security guard, a charge he denied until his death.

Findings:

• Afkari was arrested more than a month after the alleged murder and convicted mainly on his own confession. His lawyer said there was no actual video of the killing, only footage from before it happened.
• In audio messages smuggled out of prison, Afkari said he and his brothers were tortured into confessing. He said interrogators threatened his family to force him to comply. Human rights groups found his claims credible, and Iran never allowed an independent investigation into the torture allegations despite repeated calls to do so.
• State TV broadcast his confession anyway, along with a staged reenactment of the murder scene.
• The case triggered a global campaign to stop the execution. The IOC president wrote directly to Iran's supreme leader asking for mercy. FIFA, top wrestlers worldwide, and the US president at the time all made public appeals.
• On September 12, 2020, the islamic republic executed Afkari in secret anyway, ignoring every appeal.
• His body was returned to his family in the middle of the night. Authorities had already dug his grave and denied the family a proper burial.
• When the family placed a memorial stone at his grave, authorities bulldozed it. His father was arrested trying to stop the destruction.
• Two years later, on the anniversary of his execution, his sister Elham Afkari was arrested during the Mahsa Amini protests and accused of working for an opposition news outlet.
• His brother Vahid was sentenced to over 54 years in prison and 74 lashes in connection with the same case.
• Human Rights Watch said the case fits a broader pattern in the islamic republic of ignoring torture allegations and relying on coerced confessions to secure convictions.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Navid_Afkari
• https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/12/iran-suddenly-executes-wrestler-navid-afkari
• https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/28/sport/navid-afkari-cmd-spt-intl
• https://www.olympics.com/en/news/international-olympic-committee-iranian-wrestler-navid-afkari-executed
• https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4881/
• https://www.iranintl.com/en/202209133131

On November 16, 2022, security forces opened fire on a car during the Mahsa Amini protests in Izeh, Iran. Plainclothes security officials fatally shot a 9-year-old boy named Kian Pirfalak with live ammunition, firing toward the car he was traveling in with his family. Seven people died that day.

Findings:

• Kian's mother publicly described the shooting at his funeral so the authorities couldn't blame "terrorists", saying she heard it from officers themselves and they were lying.
• Iran's state-run IRNA news agency instead claimed two gunmen on motorcycles had opened fire at the market, blaming the deaths on attackers rather than security forces.
• Mojahed Kourkour was arrested on December 20, 2022, weeks after the killing, during a raid by security forces on his home village. He was not at the protest the night Kian was killed.
• Kourkour was shot in the leg during his arrest, denied medical treatment beyond having the bullet removed, and forced to confess to killing Kian while he was injured and under torture.
• He was subjected to enforced disappearance for months while his forced confessions were tortured out of him for state propaganda videos. One video showed him in a hospital bed with his arm visibly bandaged.
• Multiple witnesses testified Kourkour was not at the protest that day.
• Authorities denied him access to a lawyer during the investigation phase and never investigated his torture allegations.
• Kian's own parents publicly rejected the state's story. His father said on camera they had no complaint against Kourkour, because they saw with their own eyes that it was security forces who opened fire on their car.
• Despite this, the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court sentenced Kourkour to death three times over, on charges including "enmity against god" and "corruption on earth".
• Iran's Supreme Court briefly overturned the sentence in March 2024 and sent the case back for review, but after further proceedings the death penalty was reaffirmed and upheld.
• Officials later quietly revised the charges against him without ever formally clearing him of the killing, so the murder accusation was left hanging over him even as the case shifted.
• The regime hanged Kourkour on June 11, 2025, the 11th person executed over the 2022 protests.
• The execution was announced on the day that would have been Kian's birthday.
• Amnesty International said his arbitrary execution exposed the islamic republic's authorities' disdain for the right to life and their use of the death penalty as a tool to crush dissent and instill fear in the population.

Sources:

• https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/06/iran-arbitrary-execution-of-woman-life-freedom-protester-after-sham-trial-and-torture/
• https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/7565/2024/en/
• https://amnesty.ca/urgent-actions/iran-man-at-risk-of-imminent-execution-linked-to-protests/
• https://iranhr.net/en/articles/5807/
• https://iranhr.net/en/articles/7656/
• https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-executes-man-over-2022-protest-killings-activists-say-he-was-framed/
• https://www.iranintl.com/en/202506115508

The islamic republic has no law that criminalizes domestic violence. Not just "weak" ones or "outdated" ones but rather none at all. A bill meant to protect women from violence has been stuck in parliament for 14 years, blocked again and again by the same clerical establishment that runs the country. While that bill sat untouched, women kept getting killed.

This failure is not due to the Iranian society not wanting it, but rather, it's the regime's own institutions, year after year, choosing not to pass protections that might constrain men's power inside the household.

Findings:

• In 2024 alone, at least 179 cases of femicide were documented in Iran, according to the UN human rights office.
• Femicide cases in Iran rose nearly 60 percent in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
• Husbands and ex-husbands were the largest group of perpetrators, ahead of fathers, brothers, other male relatives, and boyfriends.
• Women were killed not just for "honor" but also for asking for a divorce, turning down a marriage proposal, or refusing to accept a second wife.
• Most victims were under 30, and in multiple cases, children witnessed the killing.
• Kurdish women faced especially high risk, with 109 femicide cases documented in that community between 2020 and 2024 alone.
• A 2021 review of dozens of academic studies estimated that 66 percent of women in Iran experience domestic abuse, and the same analysis concluded that after all this harm, there are still no laws against domestic violence, with reform efforts reduced to nothing more than a fine.
• A bill meant to prevent violence against women has still not passed after 14 years, blocked under different pretexts by every administration and parliament aligned with the "Supreme Leader".
• Under Article 301 of the regime's penal code, a father or paternal grandfather who kills his own child is exempt from the death penalty. Under Article 630, a man who catches his wife committing adultery can kill both her and the other man on the spot and faces no punishment for it.
• CHRI's executive director said women in Iran are being shot, stabbed, and burned to death by husbands and fathers in shocking numbers, while the judicial system lets these cases go with little or no punishment.
• Researchers studying the issue concluded that the legal framework actively embeds and legitimizes violence against women as a tool of patriarchal control, turning gender-based killing from a prosecutable crime into state-sanctioned enforcement of male authority.
• A UN Special Rapporteur tied this directly to the state, noting that the lack of prosecution for femicide cases contributed to Iran ranking 121st out of 193 countries on the UN's Gender Inequality Index, the lowest ranking of any country classified as having high human development.

Sources:

• https://iranhumanrights.org/2025/01/killed-because-you-are-a-woman-violence-against-women-in-iran-reaches-new-heights/
• https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/understanding-femicide-and-legal-neglect-in-iran-does-the-system-let-women-down
• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/iran-country-policy-and-information-notes/country-policy-and-information-note-women-fearing-honour-based-violence-iran-may-2022-accessible
• https://www.unodc.org/cld/uploads/res/islamic-penal-code_html/Islamic_Penal_Code.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femicide_in_Iran
• https://www.iranintl.com/en/202501070286

The IRGC ran a years-long propaganda operation across the internet, in six languages, designed to glorify itself and call for "revenge" against its enemies. Europol tore a huge chunk of it down.

Findings:

• Europol identified 14,200 posts, accounts, and links tied to the IRGC and targeted them in a coordinated crackdown on terrorist content online.
• The operation was led by Europol's EU Internet Referral Unit and involved law enforcement from 19 countries, running from February 13 to April 28.
• The network spread content in Arabic, English, French, Persian, Spanish, and Bahasa Indonesia, across mainstream social media, streaming services, blogs, and independent websites.
• The material included AI-generated videos glorifying the IRGC and calls for revenge tied to Iran's late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
• Investigators also found content from the IRGC's proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• The IRGC's main account on X, which had more than 150,000 followers, was withheld in the EU as a result of the operation.
• Europol found the IRGC relied on hosting providers spread across multiple countries, including Russia and the US, to keep its sites running, and used cryptocurrency to finance the network and dodge sanctions.
• This crackdown was only possible because the EU formally designated the IRGC a terrorist organization in February 2026.

Sources:

• https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/eu-targets-iran-revolutionary-guard-propaganda-ecosystem-in-online-crackdown
• https://www.iranintl.com/en/202605184865

On September 13, 2022, the islamic republic's "morality police" arrested 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini in Tehran for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly. Three days later, she was dead. Her death triggered the largest uprising the country had seen in decades, and the islamic republic answered it with mass killing.

Findings:

• Amini was a young Kurdish woman visiting Tehran with her brother. Witnesses said morality police officers forced her into their van. Hours after her arrest, credible reports say the morality police tortured and beat her inside the van, including blows to her head. She fell into a coma and was rushed to a hospital, where she died three days later. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/what-happened-to-mahsa-zhina-amini
• Her brother heard women screaming inside the police station while he waited for her. Multiple women who left the building told him: "they killed someone in there". https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/16/woman-dies-custody-irans-morality-police
• The islamic republic's first move was denial. Police claimed she simply fell ill and slipped into a coma. Police also denied beating her and insisted she died of a heart attack. A judiciary-linked coroner's report then blamed a childhood surgery for an "underlying disease", not her treatment in custody. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mahsa-amini-death-iran-morality-police-protests-coroner-report-rcna51169
• Over 800 members of Iran's own Medical Council didn't buy it. They accused the head of the council of helping the government cover up the real cause of her death. https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-amini-death-doctors-accuse-medical-officials/32081045.html
• Eighteen months later, the UN's own fact-finding mission threw out the regime's story completely. It concluded Amini's death was caused by physical violence she suffered while in morality police custody, found the islamic republic responsible for her death, and said the government had tried to hide the truth and intimidate her family instead of investigating properly. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-blame-violence-killed-mahsa-amini-un-finds-rcna142504
• Iranians poured into the streets in grief and rage. The islamic republic's answer was bullets. As many as 551 protesters were killed by security forces, among them at least 49 women and 68 children, most killed by gunfire. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/iran-committed-crimes-against-humanity-during-protest-crackdown-un-says
• On a single day, September 30, 2022, now known as "Bloody Friday", security forces opened fire on worshippers and protesters in Zahedan. Credible information shows security forces killed 104 protesters and bystanders that day, mostly men and boys, the highest death toll of any single day in the entire protest movement. https://media.un.org/unifeed/en/asset/d318/d3186355
• Many of the dead in Zahedan were shot from above. Police and intelligence agents opened fire on protesters from rooftops around a prayer hall and a mosque, hitting people who posed no serious threat to heavily armed security forces. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/22/iran-bloody-friday-crackdown-years-deadliest
• The crackdown wasn't limited to bullets. The UN mission found a pattern of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, and enforced disappearance, and concluded this amounted to crimes against humanity. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/iran-committed-crimes-against-humanity-during-protest-crackdown-un-says
• A later investigation backed this up with direct testimony. Six protesters between the ages of 19 and 43 said they were raped or sexually abused shortly after detention, including inside police vehicles, in covert locations, and in detention centers, and the investigation concluded this sexual violence was a deliberate strategy used against both women and men to crush dissent. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202603162661
• Children weren't spared either. The UN mission's chair said investigators found that hundreds of children, some as young as 10, were detained, and that people were arrested simply for dancing or honking their car horns. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/iran-committed-crimes-against-humanity-during-protest-crackdown-un-says
• The islamic republic then executed protesters to make an example of them. The mission found Tehran had arbitrarily executed at least nine young men between December 2022 and January 2024, with dozens more facing execution or death sentences over their role in the protests. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/iran-committed-crimes-against-humanity-during-protest-crackdown-un-says
• The islamic republic refused to cooperate with the UN investigation into its own crimes. Iranian authorities refused to cooperate with the mission at any point. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/iran-committed-crimes-against-humanity-during-protest-crackdown-un-says
• A year after Amini's death, the islamic republic was still going after her family. Authorities reportedly intimidated and harassed Amini's father to stop the family from mourning her, and her uncle was arrested and his whereabouts remain unknown. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/09/iran-one-year-anniversary-jina-mahsa-aminis-death-custody-heightened

On January 8, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 took off from Tehran. Minutes later it was hit by two missiles fired by the IRGC. All 176 people on board died, including dozens of Canadians and many Iranians.

Findings:

• For three days straight, regime officials denied any military involvement and pointed to a technical malfunction, even as satellite and video evidence mounted against them. Only after the evidence became undeniable did then-president Rouhani admit the military had shot the plane down. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/audio-recording-iran-minister-foreign-affairs-flight-ps752-1.5906538
• Canada obtained a secret recording, believed to be Iran's own foreign minister Zarif, suggesting the downing may have been intentional rather than a simple accident, exactly the opposite of the regime's public line. Iran called the recording fake. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/audio-recording-iran-minister-foreign-affairs-flight-ps752-1.5906538
• Canada's own forensic investigation found that the islamic republic put anti-aircraft systems on high alert right next to a civilian airport, without closing the airspace or warning any airlines, putting every single plane that took off that night at risk. https://international.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/corporate/reports/flight-ps752/factual-analysis
• The same investigation said the regime's official story was disingenuous, misleading, and superficial, and intentionally ignores key factors, and that the blame cannot be conveniently pinned on a few junior soldiers. https://international.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/corporate/reports/flight-ps752/factual-analysis
• Canada's report says the islamic republic bulldozed the crash site before investigators ever got there. https://international.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/corporate/reports/flight-ps752/factual-analysis
• When the regime finally released its official report over a year later, it blamed the missile strike on a "105-degree miscalibration" and bad communication, conveniently keeping the blame away from senior commanders. The report never explained the inconsistencies that independent observers, including a UN special rapporteur, had already raised. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/20/iran-court-issues-sentences-downing-ukraine-flight-ps752
• Canada's foreign minister rejected the "human error" excuse outright, saying there is no circumstance where a civilian plane gets shot down by accident in this day and age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines_Flight_752
• The regime authorities also harassed and intimidated victims' families, interfering with burials and memorials and pressuring them to accept the government's "martyrdom" label for their loved ones, while publishing photos and videos of services without permission. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/20/iran-court-issues-sentences-downing-ukraine-flight-ps752
• In 2023 a military court handed down sentences in a trial with zero transparency. The lead commander got 13 years, only 10 enforceable, while the rest of the defendants got one to three years each. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/20/iran-court-issues-sentences-downing-ukraine-flight-ps752
• The four affected countries called the trial a sham, saying neither the trial nor the verdicts brought any truth or justice to the families, since the whole process lacked impartiality and transparency from the very start. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/20/iran-court-issues-sentences-downing-ukraine-flight-ps752
• In March 2025, the islamic republic tried to argue that the ICAO had no authority to even hear the case brought against it by Canada, Sweden, Ukraine, and the UK. The ICAO rejected that objection and is moving ahead with the case. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202503181811
• The regime didn't stop there. In April 2025, five years after the shootdown, it sued at the ICJ trying to get that ICAO ruling thrown out entirely. https://simpleflying.com/iran-sues-ukraine-erroneously-shot-down/

In the fall of 2014, men on motorcycles started throwing acid in women's faces on the streets of Isfahan. The attacks badly injured at least eight women in a matter of weeks, leaving people too scared to go outside. Some sources say the real number was closer to 25 victims by the end of October. At least one woman died and many more suffered severe burns to their faces and hands.

Facts:

• The attacks followed a public push by a hardline paramilitary group to resume "morality patrols". Ansar-e Hezbollah had announced in September 2014 that it would resume vigilante-style enforcement of islamic dress codes, and people in Isfahan connected this directly to the acid attacks that followed. https://iranwire.com/en/society/60668/
• Officials repeatedly denied any link to the regime's own dress-code enforcement, even as the country's own MPs had just made it easier for vigilantes to police women's clothing. A parliamentary measure passed October 19, 2014 gave legal protection to vigilantes patrolling the streets to enforce social mores around dress and behavior. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/10/24/why-president-rouhani-is-supporting-thousands-of-iranian-protesters/
• Despite arrests being announced and walked back multiple times, nobody was ever actually charged. Iranian authorities arrested four suspects, but the interior minister said there wasn't enough evidence to charge anyone, and as of 2018 no one had been charged. The government's only response to victims was a payout. Victims were given blood money ("Diyah") from the government instead. https://iranwire.com/en/features/65413/
• When women protested, the regime cracked down on the press covering it instead of the attackers. After at least seven women had been attacked, demonstrators gathered outside courts in Isfahan and parliament in Tehran demanding an end to the violence, and the authorities responded by threatening journalists and netizens covering the story. https://rsf.org/en/acid-attacks-women-new-grounds-harassing-journalists
• Officials downplayed the attacks as the cameras turned toward them. The interior minister said foreign media were exaggerating the attacks, and the chief of staff of the armed forces said the media coverage was "worse than acid attacks". https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2014/oct/28/iranian-journalists-detained-reporting-acid-attacks
• Survivors became activists because no one else would fight for them. Marziyeh Ebrahimi turned to activism after the attack and became one of the strongest voices pushing for a 2019 law against acid attacks. Soheila Jorkesh lost her right eye and has spoken publicly about her anger that the government never found the people responsible and never paid her the full blood money she was owed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_attacks_on_women_in_Isfahan
• It took five years of public pressure before lawmakers acted at all. The Iranian Parliament passed a law in 2019 providing broader legal protection to survivors and increasing prison terms for acid attack perpetrators (five years after the original wave of attacks). https://kayhanlife.com/society/irans-guardian-council-passes-amendment-bill-on-acid-attacks-spokesman-says/