On the latest episode of the Daily Mail’s Deep Dive podcast, reporters Natalie Lisbona and Andrew Jehring discuss their exclusive investigation into a new documentary exposing the horrific extent of the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters in January.
Just weeks before US-Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s despotic leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in February, the regime turned its guns on its own people to suppress huge protests that had erupted across the country.
Doctors on the ground estimated that as many as 30,000 men, women and children were killed in just two days, on January 8 and 9. If accurate, that toll would make the crackdown the bloodiest massacre of protesters in modern history.
Many who witnessed the bloodbath did not survive to tell the tale, and details have proved difficult to unearth and verify because the regime cut off the internet on the night of January 8, just as the slaughter began.
That was until last week, when London-based Iranian opposition broadcaster Manoto released This Is Our Story, a four-part documentary pieced together from thousands of videos that brave Iranians risked their lives to smuggle out of the country.
Having gained early access to the documentary, Chief Foreign correspondent Andrew Jehring said it was ‘shameful’ that it took this long for the killings to gain international attention, a view shared by Middle East correspondent Natalie Lisbona.
On the latest Deep Dive podcast, Natalie Lisbona and Andrew Jehring discuss their exclusive investigation into a new documentary exposing the horrific extent of the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters in January
‘Look at how much coverage Gaza got,’ she said.
‘Compare that to what happened in Iran on the 8th and 9th. You can’t really compare them at all.
‘It feels like the situation in Iran got hardly any coverage, although we at the Daily Mail are very proud that we were covering it before the internet blacked out.
‘When you speak to Iranian dissidents, and I have spoken to people in Iran since, they’re really disappointed. They don’t understand why it took thousands of frames of footage for people to wake up.
‘They feel like they have been left by the wayside. Very few people were paying attention to one of the biggest massacres of unarmed protesters in history.’
The protests broke out after a currency collapse and soaring inflation swept the Iranian economy. Those who took part were overwhelmingly unarmed, and it is clear from the footage that while they knew the risks, they were not expecting slaughter on this scale.
While international news outlets and governments were aware of the crackdown, the depravity of the regime’s security forces, including the Basij, the Islamic Republic’s plain clothes militia, is only just becoming known.
Jehring said it was ‘the most appalling footage that I’ve ever seen’, describing the ‘sheer scale of violence and bloodshed’.
Just weeks before US-Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s despotic leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the regime turned its guns on its own people to suppress huge protests
Doctors on the ground estimated that as many as 30,000 men, women and children were killed in just two days
He explained: ‘You had people bleeding out in the streets, trying to make makeshift tourniquets out of belts.
‘You can see people trying to comfort strangers they have met in the street. They know they’re dying, but they’re telling them: ‘Don’t worry, brother. Don’t worry, nobody dies from a leg wound.’
‘You’ve got teenagers cowering in their homes as you can hear gunmen outside. There’s blood all over the floors. The gunmen followed the trail of blood from the protests into the home.
‘There were reports of gunmen going from hospital bed to hospital bed, executing people. You see it in the morgues the next day: piles of bodies with hospital paraphernalia all over them and gunshot wounds through the head.
‘The crimes are there for all to see.’
Listen to Lisbona and Jehring’s full analysis of the footage by searching for Deep Dive wherever you get your podcasts.
