The Iranian Judicial System: Institutionalizing Fear and Repression

"Reza Khandan's imprisonment is an affront to the most fundamental principles of human dignity and justice," stated Kerry Kennedy, the president of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center. Like many other detained Iranian activists, Reza Khandan's only crime is  openly advocating for the rule of law, women's rights and the future of Iran. As mass protests continue to spread in Iran, understanding how the system of arbitrary detention is maintained is crucial in order to determine how it can be addressed. Arbitrary detention  encompasses not only illegal detentions but also deprivations of liberty that, even when lawful, are disproportionate, unreasonable, or lack due process. One of the many goals that the Islamic Republic of Iran, like other states that resort to it, hopes to achieve through arbitrary detention is to silence dissenting voices. And it therefore cannot be ignored. 

As of January 2026, it is estimated that at least 27,000 people have been detained by the regime, including hundreds of minors. Repression in Iran extends far beyond detention and the incarceration system, encompassing surveillance, censorship, intimidation as well as physical and psychological abuse. Within this system, prisons function as a “social microcosm” under total state control as a way to suppress dissent. As Reza Afshari explains, theocratic authorities view prisons as a microcosm of “the perfect Islamic society” where they exercise total control over individuals. The prison system is designed to break anyone whose interpretation of religion differs from that of the authorities.  

The institutionalization of arbitrary detention started with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. At least 31 revolutionary tribunals have been created since then. Although these tribunals are formally presented as judicial bodies, in practice they function largely to legitimize repression rather than to guarantee due process. Witnesses have reported the use of torture to force confessions and even instances of pre-written judicial decisions. For example on Oct. 7, 2023 Reza (Gholamreza) Rasaei was sentenced due to confessions obtained after his subjection to sexual violence, asphyxiation, beatings, electric shocks and other forms of inhuman treatment. On Aug. 6, 2024, he was then secretly executed—neither his family nor his lawyer were informed. Reza Rasaei’s case is not an isolated one. It instead demonstrates how far these tribunals are from guaranteeing fair trials. Despite Iran's ratification of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1988, these tribunals clearly violate Article 15—statements obtained under torture are inadmissible in court.

An anonymous Iranian jurist reported to France Inter: "There is one revolutionary prosecutor per tribunal. He is there to read the indictment. He is subject to the will of intelligence agents and comes to present what the interrogators from the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence or the Ministry of Intelligence have written for him." This testimony illustrates that the prosecutor’s role is largely ceremonial, with real decisions determined by intelligence agencies long before any trial begins.

This subordination of the judiciary to intelligence and security forces fundamentally shapes the judicial process. Combined with the systematic use of violent methods during detention, it ensures that opponents of the regime who enter the judicial system are unlikely to regain their freedom. Even when detainees survive imprisonment, the judicial process itself functions as a mechanism of sustained control and incapacitation, whether through threats of execution, prolonged incarceration, or irreversible physical and psychological harm. The non-governmental organization Iran Human Rights reports that at least 1,500 Iranians were executed in 2025, the highest number recorded in 35 years. Iran thus remains among the countries that most frequently resort to the death penalty.

Furthermore, the regime amplifies the impact of this repression by making violence visible to society. Through media broadcasts and publicized confessions, individual punishment becomes a warning to the wider population, reinforcing fear and discouraging dissent.  On Jan. 5, 2026, Tasnim News, a website affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, broadcasted the confessions of two Iranian women—one 18 years old and the other just 16 years old— admitting to leading riots. The regime's use of media platforms illustrates how it integrates media into its broader system of repression, linking detention and propaganda to maintain control over Iranian society.  

Arbitrary detention and propaganda practices are made possible by a broader architecture of opacity, in which detainees are deliberately isolated from Iranian society. In many cases, the detainees forced to confess are held in secret detention or forcibly disappeared, leaving them more vulnerable to violent treatment and severely limiting their access to legal counsel, if it is even offered. Another tool used by the Islamic Republic of Iran is the restriction of access to a lawyer of the detainee's choice. During Frahad Meysami’s detention, he had no access to a lawyer, despite his mother going to the judicial authorities on multiple occasions with lawyer Arash Keykhosravi.

Nowhere is this system more visible than within Iranian prisons’ physical architecture. Evin Prison in Tehran is the embodiment of the dehumanization process that opponents of the Islamic Republic of Iran face. Louis Arnaud, a French citizen detained in Evin Prison for 623 days, describes the conditions inside. He spent the first part of his detention in "a corridor about fifty meters long by three meters wide. A tunnel without any windows. No bed, no chair, no furniture... but men. There are about a hundred of them lying on the bare floor." He was then moved to Section 209, the intelligence section, where he was put in a small room with blinding lights that never turned off. He adds: "there are physical tortures, such as rapes or simulated hangings and psychological tortures, which are intended to maintain permanent emotional instability.".The psychological impact of such living conditions is severe and long-lasting.

This system of repression does not affect all detainees in the same way. Its impact is particularly acute for Iranian women who challenge political authority and gender norms. Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian human rights lawyer and activist, was detained multiple times due to her career. Her most recent detention, from Jul. 2022 to Dec. 2024, was in Evin Prison. In March 2019, she was sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes: 33 years for defending women who protested the mandatory hijab and five years for "collusion against national security." Sotoudeh’s sentence became one of the harshest ever given to a human rights activist in Iran. In total, she was detained three times: first from September 2010 to September 2013, then from June 2018 to November 2020, and once more from July 2022 to December 2024. Although she has been released, she is still in Iran, and her sentences can be reactivated at any time. Additionally, she still faces a number of constraints, such as travel bans, professional restrictions on her law practice, constant surveillance and the risk of re-imprisonment. Her husband, Reza Khandan, was arrested in September 2018 and sentenced in January 2019 to six years in prison for "spreading propaganda against the state.  His imprisonment was widely seen as retaliation for Nasrin’s activism, a tactic commonly used by the Iranian regime: punishing family members to increase pressure on activists and disrupt their support networks.

The repeated arrests, combined with ongoing legal restrictions and limited freedoms, are part of the regime’s broader strategy to maintain control over dissent. The threat of further detention remains ever-present, even when the authorities release detainees “early,” giving a false appearance of leniency. However, as the Islamic Republic of Iran escalates its violent repression of the 2026 protests, the methods employed by the regime have become even more severe than in 2022–2023.  

On Jan. 5, 2026, the head of the judicial power ordered prosecutors to show “no leniency” toward protesters and to accelerate their trials. In a system already neglecting due process, speeding up trials further undermines their legitimacy: evidence may be ignored or improperly examined and basic procedural safeguards are increasingly bypassed. This escalation reveals something crucial: the regime’s violence is not a sign of strength, but of desperation. Each internet blackout, each forced confession broadcast on state media and each family member imprisoned is an admission that the system cannot win through legitimacy.

The apparatuses of fear, from revolutionary tribunals to Evin’s corridors, exist precisely because the regime cannot govern through consent. Here, there lies a paradox that the Islamic Republic cannot resolve: Every tool of repression deployed to enforce silence instead creates witnesses. Every Nasrin Sotoudeh imprisoned ensures that her name is known far beyond prison walls. Every Reza Khandan detained generates a story that escapes the regime’s control. The Islamic Republic has built an elaborate architecture of fear, but in doing so, it has also produced evidence of its own illegitimacy. Systematic arbitrary detention is not a malfunction of the system; rather, it is one of its core instruments. And while the regime enforces silence through it, the voices of resilience continue to bear witness to the human cost of its oppression.

Photo Source: Lewisiscrazy, Wikimedia Commons