Amir travelled from Australia to his hometown in Iran last month to see his family, hoping to make happy memories. Instead, he returned with visions of gunfire, blood and death.
SBS News has changed his name for safety reasons.
He was among the protesters who took to the streets in late December to express economic grievances and anti-regime sentiment, a movement that was quickly met with violence from Iranian authorities. Amir describes to SBS News the brutal and unprecedented crackdown he witnessed.
"A young man, maybe around 20, collapsed right in front of us. He was shot in the artery in his leg," he says.
"Even though the shooting was still going on, four other young men came forward, grabbed his arms and legs, and carried him into a parking lot.
The scene, the blood pouring out and the entire parking lot covered in blood, never leaves my mind.
The final moment Amir recalls of the bleeding man was seeing him unconscious and a group of people carrying him to a private car in the parking lot — probably driven by "a friend".
Almost a month later, he still doesn’t know if the man survived.
Since flying back to Australia in mid-January, Amir says he has been haunted by the violence he witnessed on the streets of Iran.
"Sometimes I would just stare at something for hours, without really thinking, stuck in my own thoughts," he says.
"At night, I'd have nightmares … at the end of the day, human life was taken right in front of me.
"Nothing about that was normal."
It was a 'shoot-to-kill'
It's been a month today since the protests in Iran began, triggered by shopkeepers demonstrating over the country's ongoing economic crisis. It has since turned into an anti-regime protest movement.
Amir says he felt compelled to join the protests out of a sense of duty to fight for his compatriots' freedom.
"I saw people in the streets putting their lives on the line, just going out and joining the crowds," he says.
"We said to ourselves: 'How is our life any more valuable than anyone else's, that we should sit in a corner and just watch?' In a real sense, nothing else mattered to us except our freedom."
The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) has confirmed that at least 6,126 people have died in Iran during the protests. Additionally, at least 214 members of security forces and government supporters have also been killed. HRANA says it is investigating the unconfirmed deaths of at least 17,091 other people.
Official figures differ, with the Iranian regime reporting a death toll of 3,118, with 2,427 of those being civilians and security force personnel.
Maryam — whose name has been changed — works at a hospital in an Iranian city and describes the injuries she has witnessed following the protests as being consistent with a "shoot-to-kill" intent.
"The hospital staff are not doing well at all because they saw with their own eyes what they [the Iranian authorities] did, and left no room for doubt," she tells SBS News.
"The wounded who were brought in had all been shot in the chest and the head; it was clearly a shoot-to-kill. And then [we] saw bodies being taken away, the corpses were stolen.
"They [regime forces] came to our hospital by car. They took all the bodies. They didn't let us hand them over [to their families]."
Another protester in Iran also tells SBS News they have been pre-emptively moving bodies to hide them from authorities and ensure they are not stolen.
"We were moving bodies with our own hands ... We saw things that will never make us the same again.
"They directly shot at heads and hearts."
Thousands 'disappeared'
Zaki Haidari, a strategic campaigner with Amnesty International Australia, says "mass arrests" have happened in Iran, but the numbers cannot be verified due to an internet blackout that has been in place since 9 January.
"We know that a lot of people are being detained and punished in detention centres … We don't have actual data as of yet, but we know that there are thousands of people 'disappeared'," he says.
There will be torture and ill treatment of individuals in [Iranian] prisons.
According to HRANA, at least 41,880 people have been arrested in Iran since the protests broke out, with concerns growing over their fate.
There are multiple reports that dozens may now be facing execution.
Amnesty International has warned about the possible execution of 19-year-old footballer Amirhossein Ghaderzadeh, who was arrested on 9 January for participating in protests and eight days later was charged with "treason against the country", which carries the death sentence in Iran.
Another protester, 26-year-old Erfan Soltani, was arrested on 5 January and sentenced to execution within days. Hengaw, an Iranian Kurdish organisation based in Norway, reported that his sentence was postponed after an international campaign. The regime has since denied that it scheduled the execution in the first place, calling it "news fabrication".
Meanwhile, the fate of thousands of arrested protesters remains uncertain.
The regime 'itching to use the death penalty'
The head of the Islamic Republic's judiciary said last week that "our main work has only just begun", with several other officials referring to the protesters as "terrorists".
Sara Kowal, the director of Eleos Justice, Monash Law, and vice-chair of the Capital Punishment Justice Project, tells SBS News the risk of the death penalty being used on those arrested is in the "extreme danger zone".
"It is clear that the Islamic Republic of Iran is itching to use the death penalty on protesters, and protesters have been convicted and sentenced to the capital offence of 'moharebe', which means in 'enmity against God'," she explains.
"There's a very specific reason they're using that charge; that charge carries a capital offence. So it's a way of trying to legitimise the execution of protestors."
A protester in Iran has also confirmed these remarks, telling SBS News: "If we make the slightest move, they will arrest us with 'moharebe'."
Iran has increased its use of the death penalty in recent years, with the UN reporting that at least 1,500 people were executed in 2025.
According to HRANA, since the protests started, at least 52 executions have been carried out across Iran for offences not related to the latest demonstrations.
"Given what we know about the Islamic Republic of Iran's appetite to execute protestors and their past behaviour following protests, there is good reason that we should all be very worried," Kowal says.
SBS News has contacted the Iranian embassy in Canberra to ask about claims protesters had been deliberately shot dead and bodies taken as well as claims some protesters were facing execution, but hadn't received a response at the time of publication.
'Photos of the killed' on the walls
Amid growing concerns about arrested protesters, eyewitnesses have described the mood on the ground as sombre.
According to HRANA, security forces have maintained a strong presence across large parts of Iran, with field controls, motorcycle patrols, and plainclothed guards in sensitive urban areas.
An eyewitness tells SBS News there are police stops in the streets that "stop cars and confiscate phones to check for videos or messages related to the protests".
Maryam has also observed similar interactions outside the hospital where she works.
"My colleague had gone to another town to pick up his son. When he came back, he said it felt like martial law: officers everywhere, security forces on every street," she says.
But security forces are not the only presence on Iran's streets, as photos of the dead are plastered on city walls — a grim but striking effort to document the site of thousands of deaths.
"I saw it myself at the exact spot where three people had been killed: three photos had been placed there. One woman and two young men," Maryam says.
"I saw [protesters] funeral notices in several places … In many places you go, you see these photos, and you realise people were killed there."
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