Woman shot dead in head as body bags show emerging picture of Iranian crackdown

Why it matters

The regime appears to want to avoid the spectacle and momentum which large-scale mourning might give to the protests, as it did during the revolution which brought the ayatollahs to power in Iran in 1979.

Key takeaways

• There are 250 of them.The date on the screen is 9 January, Friday.This suggests that in this morgue alone there are the bodies of 250 people, killed during Thursday night's protests.Twenty-three-year-old Robina Aminian was shot in the head that night.She was studying fashion at university in Tehran and had gone to join the protests after class.Two family members told Sky News how authorities tried to prevent them from retrieving her body.They finally managed to take her to Kermanshah in western Iran, where they gave her a secret burial.From their reports, it would appear the regime wants to avoid the spectacle and momentum which large-scale mourning might give to the protests, as it did during the revolution which brought the ayatollahs to power in Iran in 1979."The Iranian tradition of funeral is that when somebody dies, on the 40th day of the passing of the deceased, people gather to commemorate the death," says Sina Azodi of the Atlantic Council."In 1978, the revolution and the 40-day ceremony mobilised people to chant against the shah's regime, and then there were more people killed during those demonstrations so there was a cycle, creating martyrs for the revolution."The Islamic Republic has learned that lesson."The scant information filtering out of Iran makes an already murky situation even more difficult to understand.The US president promised retaliation if the Iranians started firing on protestors, and now he will be weighing his options.One further point of comparison with these protests and the revolution which unseated the shah is that then, as the system started to crumble, the security forces knew the West would welcome them with open arms.That is very far from being the case now.Which means the probability the Revolutionary Guard hunkers down, staying loyal to the hand which feeds them, that bit more likely - a dangerous proposition for the protesters on Iran's streets.
• The extent of the state's crackdown on Iranian protesters is beginning to emerge, despite the internet shutdown.Several videos centre around a forensics institute in the neighbourhood of Kharizak, south of the capital, Tehran.Some have been filtered out via Starlink, but Iranian state TV has footage from the same location.All show a multitude of body bags, some lined up on the floor or on mortuary trolleys, others in long rows outside as relatives search for loved ones.One video contains telling information.It films a screen inside the forensics centre which identifies the dead through a long list of photos, as a loudspeaker calls out their names and asks relatives to collect the body.On the left of the screen is a long list of jpeg numbers, correlating with the photos of the deceased.