Authorities demanding large sums for return of protesters’ bodies, BBC told

Families of people killed in protests in Iran told the BBC that authorities were demanding large sums of money to return the bodies for burial.

Multiple sources told BBC Persian that the bodies were kept in morgues and hospitals and that security forces would not release them unless their relatives paid money.

At least 2,435 people have died in more than two weeks of protests across the country.

A family in the northern city of Rasht told the BBC that security forces had demanded 700 million tomans ($5,000; £3,700) to release their loved one’s body.

They said the protest was held in the morgue of Poursina Hospital along with at least 70 dead protesters.

Meanwhile in Tehran, the family of a seasonal Kurdish construction worker went to collect the body, but were told they would have to pay a billion tomans ($7,000; £5,200) to retrieve it.

The family told the BBC they could not afford the fee and had to leave the country without their son’s body. A construction worker in Iran usually earns less than $100 a month.

In some cases, hospital staff warned relatives of the dead in advance to come and collect the bodies before security forces could extort any money.

An incident was told from BBC Persian Woman – The person whose identity we have not disclosed for her safety, who did not know that her husband had been killed until she was phoned by hospital staff on January 9.

They told him he had to come immediately and collect his body before security forces arrived and demanded payment for his release.

This was told to BBC Persian by a relative who lives in London and spoke to him.

Woman She later took her two children to the hospital to find her husband’s body. He put her in the back of a pickup truck and drove seven hours to their hometown in western Iran to bury her.

“I cried over his body in the back of the truck for seven hours while my children sat in the front seat,” he told his relative from London.

BBC Persian also received reports that officials at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra morgue told families that the body would be released without charge if they claimed their child was a member of the Basij paramilitary force and had been killed by protesters.

In a message to the BBC, the family member said: “We were asked to attend a pro-government rally and present the body as a martyr. We did not accept this.”

In another case in Tehran, a source told BBC Persian that several families entered the morgue to collect the bodies for fear of being taken away by authorities.

“Many families broke down the morgue door and removed bodies from ambulances, fearing authorities might hide the bodies or bury them without their knowledge,” a source told the BBC.

The source said the families then guarded the bodies on the ground in the hospital courtyard for several hours to prevent them from being taken away until they could find private ambulances to transport the bodies.

The internet and communications outage made it difficult to get the full picture of what was happening on the ground. International human rights groups do not have direct access to the country, and the Iranian government, like other international news organizations, does not allow the BBC to report on the ground.

Demonstrations began in the capital Tehran on December 29, after the value of the Iranian currency dropped sharply against the dollar. As protests spread to dozens of other towns and cities, they turned against Iran’s religious rulers and security forces launched a violent crackdown.

The protests escalated significantly last Thursday and were met with lethal force by authorities.

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), at least 2,435 protesters have been killed since the unrest began, as well as 13 children and 153 people affiliated with security forces or the government. Another 18,470 protesters were reportedly arrested.

Meanwhile, arrests continue across the country. Security forces and Revolutionary Guard intelligence units detained activists, lawyers, and ordinary citizens.