For more than eight hours, footage exposes the violence the Iranian regime sought to conceal from the outside world.
Snipers take aim at protesters in the streets, firing toward their heads, while machine-gun bursts tear through the crowds.
Inside their homes, teenagers hide from armed paramilitaries roaming outside. Some hold injured friends in their arms as they bleed to death.
Bodies are abandoned where victims fell. Later, the dead fill mortuaries, laid out shoulder to shoulder as families wait to claim them.
Yet amid the bloodshed and unbearable cries of mourning, the moment that lingers most is a father’s quiet search for his missing son. His story features in This Is Our Story, a new documentary from the Iranian opposition channel Manoto, which premieres on YouTube on Saturday.
“Sepehr, my boy, where are you?” Esmail Shokri calls softly. He repeats the question—“Sepehr, my son, where are you?”—as tears begin to overwhelm his voice.
At the Kahrizak Forensics Centre outside Tehran, he moves from one body to another, searching for his 26-year-old son. Sepehr was among the tens of thousands believed to have been killed in January.
For 12 agonising minutes, Esmail studies hundreds of corpses, most of them young men and women whose deaths have been attributed to orders issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“Those poor young men,” he says. “Just look at them. Look where their lives have ended.”
Sepehr Shokri, pictured DJing, was among the tens of thousands reported killed in Iran in January
The 26-year-old died during protests in Tehran
“Look at him, even the way he is resting his hand,” Esmail says. “Oh God, his head has been blown apart. She is a woman, for goodness’ sake. Oh, you poor thing.”
He continues through the morgue, stunned by each new sight and grieving for every young life lost. Still, he cannot find his own son’s remains.
Overcome with anguish, he says: “This is proof of the Islamic Republic’s crimes. The world must see this. Look at this, world—this is not a film. This is real.”
But nine months after what has been described as the largest massacre of protesters in modern history, much of the world still has not witnessed the evidence of the alleged crimes under Khamenei.
There have been no major demonstrations in Western cities and little public outcry on behalf of Iran’s people. Despite the scale of the deaths, their suffering has largely gone unnoticed.
Doctors working inside Iran estimated that more than 30,000 people may have been killed between December 28 and January 9, with most of the deaths occurring during the first two days.
On January 8, as Khamenei allegedly ordered an escalation in the crackdown, Iran’s internet was shut down. The blackout prevented images and testimony from reaching the wider world.
The scale of the violence was obscured so effectively that the full horror could be dismissed or overlooked.
In footage from This Is Our Story, Esmail searches among the dead for the body of his son Sepehr
Esmail spent 12 minutes examining hundreds of corpses in the search for his son, pictured in his youth
Since that day, hidden from the world, the people have been systemically robbed of their dignity – many intimidated and arrested simply for grieving for their loved ones.
Tens of thousands have been arrested, with dozens executed and over 100 more facing death sentences.
The US and Israel killed Khamenei seven weeks after the protests on February 28, partly in response to this slaughter but also for their own strategic objectives. Yet the war this started has not overthrown his regime.
Worse, the global economic meltdown it has triggered has further masked the suffering of Iranians at the exact moment they so desperately needed the world to see what was happening and respond.
Outside of Iran, they were forgotten. Now Manoto seeks to right this wrong.
For over six months, its skeleton team painstakingly combed through over 10,000 videos filmed by thousands of ordinary Iranians who risked their lives to smuggle the material out of the country.
Today it publishes the historic four-part documentary on YouTube to serve as a permanent, public record of Khamenei’s massacre.
The Daily Mail was given exclusive access to the harrowing tapes ahead of publication.
There is no narrator. The bloodbath is told only by its survivors as they record it on the ground, subtitled in English.
Before watching it, Manoto founder Kayvan Abbassi says: ‘Think of Manchester,’ referring to the 2017 terror attack where 22 were murdered by Islamist suicide bomber Salman Abedi.
‘Now imagine that the killings were carried out by your own security forces.
‘Imagine that, afterwards, families could face reprisals for speaking about the people they had lost.’
Sepehr, pictured as a baby, was one of an estimated estimated 30,000 Iranians who were killed between December 28 and January 9
Sepehr pictured in his youth wearing a graduation cap and gown while holding a certificate
Consider too the bravery of those who knew this and decided to record their government’s crimes in a country where the free press is banned and opponents are executed.
‘They risked everything to show us,’ producer Salomeh Seyednia says. ‘The least the world can do is watch.’
The protests were sparked on December 28 last year in part by spiralling inflation which left Iranians unable to live after nearly half a century of misrule by the theocratic dictatorship.
‘For God’s sake do something,’ a man driving to work pleads with the regime at the start of This Is Our Story. If not, he adds: ‘Shoot all 80 million of us. Get it over with.’
Soon the Supreme Leader’s men start to oblige.
Tehran bazaars closed in protest at the currency collapse on December 28, and within a day the unrest had swept across the entire country.
They called for the return of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who fled as a child as the brutal rule of his father, the last Shah, was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Caught unawares at first, within 24 hours the regime’s feared Basij paramilitary group – heavily armed thugs – responds with savagery.
Snipers are seen on the roof in Fasa, in the southern province of Fars on December 29. The crack of gunfire signals the regime has graduated from pellets and smoke grenades to live ammunition.
In the western province of Lorestan, blood pours out of a man’s leg. ‘The b*****ds are firing directly at us,’ another man screams.
Images roll of the dead and dying bleeding out.
Where can one turn for help when it is your own government doing the killing?
Roham Barjasteh was killed that night in Razavi Khorasan province, northeast Iran
Iranian authorities buried the 11-year-old in secret at night and even banned his parents from attending
A man is seen lying in an apartment, a huge, festering wound in his stomach. A bloodied makeshift scalpel is by his bedside.
‘We brought him home ourselves and took the bullet out – now he has a fever and chills,’ his brother says. They had no choice. Were they to go to hospital they would be arrested or executed.
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But still the protesters resist, night after night. ‘I have left my home to join the people,’ one man says. ‘Either I will die, or together with my sisters and brothers we will take Iran back.’
At demonstrations in Qom, south of Theran, regime forces respond with bestial savagery slice off a man’s hands.
Yet the demonstrations grow further.
‘I have nothing left,’ a brave young man shouts at regime forces in the Lorestan Province on January 3. ‘What else can you do to me? Either kill me – or I’m not leaving.’
The regime’s answer comes fast.
Chilling footage shows the Basij move in on motorbikes once more, beating and killing all in their path. The people try to fight back, hurling stones.
In Shiraz in southern Iran, a protester sets one alight with a makeshift flamethrower. The Basij chase him down. Over a dozen are seen beating him on the floor.
He is dragged onto a road, and kicked further. They walk away, leaving his limp and lifeless body in the street.
In Kermanshah, western Iran, someone films from an apartment as a woman rails below! ‘Leave me alone! Help me, please!’
Suddenly it goes quiet. ‘They used a stun gun,’ the man filming says.
‘They’ve killed everyone here,’ a protester in Parand, southwest of Tehran, says. ‘From very little children to adults.’
In the Alborz Province, a young man is cowering in a house where blood stains the floor. ‘They followed us from the alley and broke into our homes,’ he says.
‘Everywhere is full of blood… Now they are standing at the front door and want to take us, too. Please help us. We are alone. They killed everyone.’
In Tehran, a mother nurses her 17-year-old son who has been shot over 20 times with pellets. ‘No hospital will accept him,’ she says. ‘The pellets are still in his body, we do not know what to do.’
On the streets, a woman, blood dripping from her face, says defiantly: ‘I’m not afraid – I have been dead for 47 years.’
When the exiled Crown Prince called for the public to conduct a mass organised demonstration on January 8, the people knew what awaited them.
That morning, a man visits a cemetery. In north-eastern Iran, which is eerily quiet as those who usually visit are preparing to march against the regime.
He is visiting to say goodbye to his late father.
‘Maybe tonight I’ll die and go to my dad,’ he says calmly. ‘I hope the dictators reach the next world first and our fathers teach them a lesson… Goodbye, everyone.’
Others record final messages to their parents. One son instructs his mother: ‘Keep your door open to everyone… help them help them escape over the balcony.’
‘Of course,’ his mother responds.
By nightfall, millions across the country are chanting ‘Long live the Shah’ and ‘Death to Khamenei’.
Over the next two days the savagery reaches new levels.
The people attempt to treat the dying in the street using shirts and belts as tourniquets. They comfort dying strangers.
Evidence of head shots is everywhere. Calls are made for pillows in a desperate bid to stem profuse bleeding from cracked skulls.
‘They killed so many people!’ another cries out helplessly. ‘They shot them in the head!’
In Alborz province, footage shows a man who has been shot in the face. His wife is screaming: ‘My child is eight years old, she keeps saying: ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ How can I answer her? What am I supposed to tell her?’
As the bloody night comes to a close, a man drives along a highway, filming corpses that litter the road. ‘Bodies here… bodies there… bodies everywhere…’
Footage shows the burnt shell of Rasht Bazaar, in the northern province of Gilan, where regime forces trapped protesters before setting it alight, killing hundreds.
A citizen journalist says: ‘They aimed guns at the firefighters and said: ‘If you put it out, we’ll shoot you.’
Parents were forced to hide their dead children in their own homes. A mother is seen gently caressing the body of her 13-year-old daughter in her living room. ‘Only 13 years old… Just 13,’ a man says.
Roham Barjasteh, 11, was killed that night in Razavi Khorasan province, northeast Iran. Authorities buried his body at night, in secret, and banned his parents from attending – a final act of sadistic cruelty.
The morning after the January 8 massacre the hospitals and morgues are overrun with dead.
‘If they say only 50 or 60 died, don’t believe them,’ a medical worker is overheard saying. ‘Since this morning I’ve personally sent over a thousand bodies out of this hall. Over a thousand.’
But by nightfall, the people have taken to the streets once more. They are again greeted with snipers and machine gun fire and the following morning bodies overwhelmed morgues.
Like Esmail, parents across the country were forced to go body to body searching for loved ones.
He was arrested at his son’s grave two months later while his wife was threatened with gang rape – part of the regime’s systematic humiliation that continues today.
For some, funerals became moments of defiance.
‘Fear my rage now that I have been left with no-one,’ one mother roars through loudspeakers at her son’s funeral at the end of the documentary, addressing the bloodsoaked rulers of Iran.
‘I swear by the innocent blood of those crucified by ignorance I will make you answer for it… If I survived, it was to see the day you fall.’
For others, the pain was simply too much.
On the day of Faezeh Mostaan’s funeral, her mother collapsed. She was unresponsive for the entire day.
After her 20-year-old daughter was shot dead, Faezeh’s mother lay with her body all night, gently caressing her cheek.
‘I’m still trapped in the night I kissed your cold face and called your name,’ she said weeks later.
‘Forty days? It feels like yesterday I held your cold hands and kissed them. I held them tight, trying to warm them, but you no longer answered me.
‘Neither earth nor time can ease this pain. This grief has no expiry date.’
For nine months, this suffering has been covered up.
Now Manoto and Iran’s brave citizen journalists have answered Esmail’s call.
Finally the world can hear the Iranian people’s cries. Khamenei’s crime scene is open for all to see.
Read More: Inside Iran’s bloodiest crackdown: How brave protesters defied regime
