The horrific torture awaiting captured Iranian protesters: Inside regime’s ‘slaughterhouse’ jails where inmates face gang-rape, electric shocks to the genitals and having nails pulled out

In a stark interrogation room in the Iranian city of Bukan, six hardened regime guards prepare to unleash a 72-hour marathon of torture.

For three horrific nights they torment their victim, a political prisoner on death row, unleashing wave after wave of beatings and electric shocks as he slips in and out of consciousness. But the brutality doesn’t end there.

Kurdish farmer Rezgar Beigzadeh Babamiri’s ordeal was only just beginning and in a harrowing letter from prison he described 130 days of merciless abuse including mock executions and waterboarding.

His chilling account is just one example of the brutality meted out by the Islamic Republic’s ruthless jailers who use extreme violence to spread fear among those who dare stand up to the Ayatollah’s regime.

This week, at least 3,000 protesters are languishing in prisons that activists have described as ‘slaughterhouses’, having been rounded up in a brutal crackdown on anti-government riots.

The regime has denied they will carry out mass executions, but activists are unconvinced and fear many will be subjected to the same kind of torture as Babamiri – or worse.

That fear has been sharply focused on the case of heroic Iranian protester Erfan Soltani. 

Soltani was widely believed to be facing imminent execution after his family were told to prepare for his death, prompting international alarm.

The 26-year-old shopkeeper has since become an unlikely focal point in an escalating international power struggle between Tehran and Washington, after Donald Trump warned that executing anti-government demonstrators could trigger US military action against Iran.

Iranian authorities have denied that Soltani has been sentenced to death.

But human rights groups warn that even if Soltani avoids execution, he could still face years of extreme torture inside Iran‘s prison system, where detainees describe beatings, pepper spray and electric shocks, including to the genitals.

Amnesty International has documented cases in which detainees were suspended by their hands and feet from a pole in a painful position referred to by interrogators as ‘chicken kebab’, forcing the body into extreme stress for prolonged periods.

Other reported methods include waterboarding, mock executions by hanging or firing squad, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, sensory overload using light or noise, and the forcible removal of fingernails or toenails. 

The organisation says such torture is routinely used to extract ‘confessions’ before any legal proceedings have taken place, with the Iranian state broadcaster airing footage of detainees making televised admissions that rights groups say are coerced.

State television has broadcast dozens of such confessions in recent weeks, according to rights groups, including footage of detainees breaking down in tears while being questioned by Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, a hardline official sanctioned by both the European Union and the United States. 

In a letter from Urmia Central Prison, Rezgar Beigzadeh, said he was tied to a chair with a rope while intelligence agents applied electric shocks to his earlobes, testicles, nipples, spine, sides, armpits, thighs and temples, inflicting unbearable pain to force him to write or say what interrogators wanted on camera.

Sexual violence has also been documented as a method of abuse. A Kurdish woman told Human Rights Watch that in November 2022 two men from the security forces raped her while a female agent held her down and facilitated the assault.

A 24-year-old Kurdish man from West Azerbaijan province said he was tortured and raped with a baton by intelligence forces in a secret detention centre.

And a 30-year-old man from East Azerbaijan province said he was blindfolded, beaten and gang raped by security officers inside a van. 

Another detainee said that when he told interrogators he was not affiliated with any political party and would no longer protest, officers tore his clothes apart and raped him until he lost consciousness. 

He said that when water was poured over his head he regained consciousness to find his body covered in blood.

Rare footage leaked from inside Tehran’s Evin Prison and later analysed by Amnesty has shown guards beating and mistreating detainees, providing visual corroboration of abuse long documented by rights groups.

Human rights organisations warn that these practices are not isolated incidents, but form part of a wider pattern across Iran’s detention system.

Soltani, 26, is believed to be held at Ghezel-Hesar Prison, a vast state detention centre long accused of serious human rights violations.

Former inmates and monitoring groups say the prison is dangerously overcrowded, routinely denies medical care and has been used as a major execution site.

One former political prisoner described it as a ‘horrific slaughterhouse’, saying inmates were beaten, denied treatment and forced to sleep packed into filthy cells. 

The few images of the facility to emerge through Iran’s heavily restricted media environment show a high brick wall topped with razor wire surrounding the prison.

Iran has gained a reputation for carrying out executions at scale. 

According to Amnesty International, the country executed more than 1,000 people last year, the highest number recorded since 2015, with rights groups warning it now executes more people per capita than any other state.

Human rights organisations say the abuses reported at Ghezel-Hesar are not exceptional, but reflect a wider pattern across Iran’s detention system.

Amnesty and other monitors have documented torture, coerced confessions and prolonged detention in facilities across the country, warning that imprisonment itself has become a tool to punish and intimidate protesters.

In 2024, a female protester held at Evin Prison said she was placed in solitary confinement for the first four months of her detention, spending her days in a tiny, windowless cell with no bed or toilet.

Soltani has been charged with ‘collusion against internal security’ and ‘propaganda activities against the system’, according to state media. 

But he remains in legal limbo, with Iranian authorities yet to publicly clarify whether he has been formally tried, what sentence he could face, or how long he may be detained.

Rights groups say such uncertainty is common for protest detainees, many of whom are held for months without clear information about their cases, often following brief or closed hearings on vaguely defined national security charges.

Avoiding a long prison sentence does not necessarily protect detainees from violence. 

UN experts have documented recent cases in which prisoners were subjected to repeated floggings or had fingers amputated, warning that such punishments are used to instil fear and demonstrate the state’s control over detainees’ bodies.

In 2024, Iranian authorities whipped a woman 74 times for ‘violating public morals’ and fined her for refusing to wear a hijab while walking through the streets of Tehran.

Roya Heshmati, 33, was lashed with a leather whip and forced to pay a fine equivalent to £255 after she ‘encouraged permissiveness’ by appearing in public without covering her head.

Writing on her now locked social media page, Heshmati described being beaten mercilessly across her back, legs and buttocks in a dank room she likened to a medieval torture chamber, but said she still refused to wear a hijab in the courtroom even after the ordeal. 

‘[The lashing] was over. We left the room. I did not let them think I had experienced pain,’ she wrote. ‘I threw off my scarf at the courtroom entrance. The woman asked me to wear the headscarf. I did not stop and she pulled it over my head again.’

Much of what happens to detainees only emerges through survivor testimony and rights group reporting, due to Iran’s tightly controlled media environment.

The lack of transparency has become especially apparent as anti-government protests have resurfaced across the country, with authorities once again responding through mass arrests, harsh punishments and threats of the most severe sentences.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, with reports of buildings set ablaze, cars overturned and chants of ‘death to the dictator’.

State aligned clerics and media figures have warned that protesters could be treated as ‘enemies of God’, a charge that can carry the death penalty under Iran’s legal system.

Around 3,000 people were arrested during the recent protests in Iran, according to security officials cited by the country’s Tasnim news agency on Friday.

The 3,000 people detained included ‘armed individuals and rioters’ and ‘members of terrorist organisations’, according to Tasnim, which is considered close to security forces in Iran.

But rights groups believe that number to be far higher, estimating up to 20,000 arrests.

Soltani was arrested for taking part in protests on January 10. His family was later told he would face the death penalty and that his execution was imminent.

But Tehran has since confirmed that Soltani will not face execution, after Trump warned that executing anti-government demonstrators could trigger military action.

Iran’s judiciary said the charges against Soltani do not carry the death sentence if confirmed by a court, but provided no further detail on his legal status, access to a lawyer or the length of time he could remain in detention.