Iran protests: Isolation, fear and beatings – Life inside the country’s notorious detention cells
Mina left solitary confinement a few days ago.
She has now been arrested twice by Iranian forces for taking part in the protests sweeping her country.
Speaking to Sky News through voice notes sent on an encrypted messaging app, she spoke about her experience and why she is prepared to risk her life to help secure change in Iran. We have changed her name and withheld some details to protect her identity.
“Our whole life has changed,” she says.
Mina, not her real name, spoke to Sky News shortly after leaving solitary confinement after being detained taking part in the protests
Before the death of Mahsa Amini in mid-September, Mina – an academic in her early 30s – was focused on her PhD studies in the Kurdish region of Iran.
Now, she says the daily lives of Iranian and Kurdish Iranians have been transformed by the constant protests triggered by the young woman’s death.
Usually, Mina would be studying in the library and hanging out with friends. Instead, a few days ago, she was detained and confined in a solitary cell by the regime’s intelligence office.
“This is a place where detainees are not transferred into the justice system. They undergo beatings and torture,” she explains.
The torture is sometimes physical, mental or a combination of the two. Mina is too afraid to describe what happened to her in her voice messages to us.
Two of her female friends were recently released from the juvenile detention centre in Sanandaj, the capital of the Kurdish region.
Mina describes their experiences: “When women’s rights activists are detained, they [the police] don’t attack you physically.
“Instead [the police] threaten, intimidate and try to frighten them. They insult people’s beliefs. It is an intense psychological violence.
“That woman’s future is then also targeted. They can make the woman lose her job and make her life difficult. This creates crippling fear.”
Mina has also been detained – she says illegally – during previous protests, facing interrogations and the seizure of her her laptop and mobile phone.
Now she has a lawyer who was able to help her escape detention this time and pay bail.
After being held in a cell, Mina was taken to a building she describes as a house. She was held there once again in solitary confinement before her recent release.
Mina believes the authorities have arrested so many people that they have run out of cells to hold them.
She knows of two other student protesters who were also not held in a traditional cell.
“They were held for a week in a huge basement full of protesters. They told me that they were beaten by cables and iron sticks.
“The jails are full of prisoners so now they use houses and basements to detain protesters.”
A man is kicked by Iranian plain clothes security forces, one of whom is holding a gun
The threat of loss of life is considerable. An estimated 244 protesters have died, including 32 children, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran.
“When we speak about fear for life, every person in this movement fears for their own lives and the lives of their fellow protesters,” she says, reflecting on the events of the current and past protests.
“We see guns firing in front of us.
“We have woken in the night shocked out of sleep at the sound of bullets, sirens and the smell of gunpowder and burning on the streets.
“We see how many people are being killed so the fear of losing one’s life still exists.”
Protesters who survive have other fears.
“Many of us are concerned about what is going to happen and about the heavy price we have paid inside the country because of the protests and strikes.
“We are also afraid of the hope we have pinned on change.
“Our fear and concern is that this hope will be lost or crushed.”
Much of the news coverage of the protests has focussed on Tehran, the capital of Iran.
But some of the biggest protests have happened in the Kurdish region of Iran, an area that both Mina and Amini call – or used to call – home.
Tensions have been particularly high there. A recent Sky News investigation tracked the intensifying crackdown being carried out by Iran’s security forces against the Iranian Kurds.
Verified videos online show police roving the streets on motorbikes and firing onto civilians. Plains clothes officers lurk among them in crowds. Tear gas canisters and bullet cases can be found on the floor, as seen in this video provides by human rights group Amnesty International.
One video, shakily filmed from a window in Sanandaj, shows security forces patrolling and firing on a residential street, with a fire burning behind them. Some of the men are heavily armed and nearly all have their faces obscured as they appear to shoot at local shops and people’s homes.
Mina fears that the brutal tactics of the police have ground down some protesters.
“I think these protests will continue but maybe not with the intensity of the first days and weeks, partly because the crackdown has intensified.
“But, I think some people will continue despite that.”
Iranian Kurds have been protesting since Amini’s death, with videos showing huge crowds at her funeral on 17 September.
Huge crowds gathered for Amini’s funeral in her hometown of Saqqez in the Kurdish region of Iran
Mina remembers the worry she and those around her felt for the 22-year-old, who was killed after being detained by officials who claimed she wore her hijab (head covering) “improperly”.
Throughout our interview Mina calls Amini by her true, Kurdish name: Jina. Under Iranian convention, many Kurdish names are not allowed and so instead Amini has become widely known by her Iranian name – Mahsa.
“Yes, the current protest started with the death of Jina but this is about institutional violence against all the people and all the individuals living in this society,” she explains.
She gives an example of how the regime’s restrictions on women have a direct impact on that person’s family.
In 2009, Mina was taken to the notorious Vozara Street, home to the morality police’s detention centre.
Mahsa Amini, pictured here in this portrait, was 22-years-old when she died
They said, as they would say 13 years later to Amini, that Mina’s hijab was unsuitable. They said Mina’s family and in particular her husband are also responsible for her covering. They said if Mina’s hijab was unsuitable again, Mina’s husband had failed in his duty.
She explains: “The families become involved because they are summoned too. They insult them, they call them without honour. They say these things to husband, to brother, mother and father.”
The protesters on the streets of Iran are also demanding action on a number of economic, social and environmental issues.
What does Mina hope will come from these protests, that previous demonstrations have been unable to achieve?
“The hope and desire is that a fundamental change will come,” she says.
Mina admits change may not happen now, or perhaps ever, but believes the fact protests have continued in the face of militaristic policing shows the seed of anger that formed when Amini died has grown roots and is now anchored in the Iranian people.
“I and many other people have concluded that maybe it is true that change will not happen right now but in the coming months or years, it will achieve the result people want.
“So hopefulness is greater than hopelessness. We will continue.”
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This year will likely be the second or third warmest ever on record globally, as an “unprecedented streak” of high temperatures persists, UN scientists have warned.
It comes as climate talks between world leaders get under way in Brazil.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Prince William addressed other nations in the Amazonian city of Belem, including Brazil‘s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and officials from Jamaica, which is still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Melissa.
Global average surface temperatures in January to August 2025 were 1.42C above pre-industrial times, before humans started burning fossil fuels at scale, the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation has said.
The Amazon rainforest around COP30 is threatened by climate change and mining, which also raises cash for the state of Para. Pic: Reuters
The level is closing in on the target set in the landmark Paris Agreement, struck at COP21 in 2015, which aimed to limit global warming to “well below” 2C and ideally 1.5C.
That means just 10 years later, it is already looking “virtually impossible” to stick to the Paris goal without at least temporarily overshooting it, the WMO said.
Under this heat, the UK experienced its hottest summer on record, two million people in Pakistan were evacuated from deadly floods and parts of the Amazon rainforest are so dry that once rare wildfires now spread easily.
Hilde Heine, president of the coral atoll country of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, said the “widespread mortality of coral reefs [is] now seemingly inevitable” and the Amazon is “likely not far behind in suffering a similar fate”.
WMO chief Celeste Saulo stressed it would be “still entirely possible and essential” to bring temperatures down to the 1.5C goal again.
That 1.5C limit is “not just a figure” but a “lifeline for Pacific communities and climate-vulnerable nations” grappling with rising and warming seas, said Shiva Gounden, head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
“The legal, moral, and political responsibility for climate action has never been stronger, and the ambition leaders take to Belem will define its success.”
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A climate change protester. File pic: AP
Who’s staying away?
The leaders are in town over the course of two days, before the COP30 climate summit begins on Monday.
But only about 60 are due to attend, compared with more than double the number in some previous years.
The heads of the world’s three largest drivers of climate change, China, the US and India, are all staying at home.
Although many missing leaders will still send officials to the negotiations, diplomats here in Belem are worried that governments are distracted by cost-of-living woes and boosting defence.
They also fear US President Donald Trump will seek to water down any deals from afar by threatening countries that agree to anything too ambitious.
Leaders ‘denying reality’
Mariana Menezes, a Brazilian mother caught up in the devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul last year, said: “We see world leaders denying reality and making plans to expand fossil fuels.
“These people, who once enjoyed full lives with unforgettable summers and long walks outdoors in their youth, are condemning future generations to lives of pollution and disasters.”
The WMO’s annual State of the Climate reports found that the past 11 years – from the Paris Agreement year of 2015 to 2025 – have each been in the top 11 warmest on record.
And the past three years have been the three warmest years in the record, stretching back 176 years.
In his speech, Sir Keir admitted that the “consensus is gone” on climate change – that cross-party unity on the science has splintered at home and globally.
He made an economic case for net zero, saying the green transition would create jobs and lower household bills.
But despite attacks on climate policies from the Conservatives and Reform, Britons are still concerned about and believe in climate change, and are still buying in to green technology like electric vehicles and heat pumps, Sky News has found.
US soldiers in Germany may not receive their November pay and have been given food bank advice as a government shutdown entered a record 37th day.
Around 37,000 US soldiers stationed in the country face uncertainty over November salary payments.
The Pentagon has warned US troops may not receive mid-month wages despite last-minute funding for October.
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent told CBS News: “I think we’ll be able to pay them beginning in November, but by 15 November our troops and service members who are willing to risk their lives aren’t going to be able to get paid.”
The US army also published guidance on its website directing soldiers in Germany to emergency social benefits, loans, and food sharing organisations including Tafel Deutschland – the umbrella organisation of more than 970 food banks in the country – as well as the app Too Good To Go.
Some of the information was later removed from the web page of the garrison in Bavaria, but some of the listings for services for those affected by the shutdown remained on a separate document.
Read more: What impact is the shutdown having?
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Cuts to flights
The US federal government shutdown became the longest in history on Wednesday – with Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, announcing he was ordering a 10% cut in flights at 40 major US airports from Friday.
Tens of thousands of flights have been delayed because of widespread air traffic control shortages, with the shutdown forcing 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 Transportation Security Administration agents to work without pay.
Airlines have said at least 3.2 million travellers have already been impacted by air traffic control shortages.
Travellers waiting in long airport security lines in Houston on 3 November. Pic: AP
“Our job is to make sure we make the hard decisions to continue to keep the airspace safe,” said Mr Duffy.
“When we see pressures building in these 40 markets, we just can’t ignore it,” said Bryan Bedford, head of the Federal Aviation Administration.
“We can take action today to prevent things from deteriorating so the system is extremely safe today, will be extremely safe tomorrow.”
The government did not name the 40 sites affected, but the cuts are expected to hit the busiest airports, including those serving New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Dallas.
This would reduce as many as 1,800 flights and more than 268,000 airline seats, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
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Shutdown longest in history
The shutdown, which started on 1 October, has been triggered by politicians failing to pass new funding bills as a stand-off between the Democrats and Republicans over healthcare spending continues.
It has now eclipsed the 35-day federal closure in late 2018 and early 2019 during Donald Trump’s first term – disrupting the lives of millions of Americans as all non-essential parts of government are frozen.
Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate. But 60 votes are needed to pass any funding bill.
The Trump administration has sought to ramp up the pressure on Democrats to end the shutdown and has increasingly raised the spectre of dramatic aviation disruptions to force them to vote to reopen the government.
However, Democrats contend Republicans are to blame for refusing to negotiate over key health care subsidies.
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