A Web of Impunity: The Killings Iran’s Internet Shutdown Hid

Amnesty International recorded and verified the deaths of 323 people killed by the Iranian security services between 15 and 19 November 2019. Our investigation, published in May 2020, found that more than 237 of these deaths took place within 48 hours of the internet shutting down on 16 November.

In the absence of online documentation during the shutdown, Amnesty International’s researchers received information from human rights activists and journalists. To verify and add to these reports Amnesty interviewed family members and friends, medical workers and eyewitnesses, among others. Researchers also cross-checked funeral posters, gravesites, death certificates and local media reports.

Amnesty’s Evidence Lab, partnered with the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at the University of California and Anita Gohdes the The Hertie School to compare information on when, where, and how people were killed with reports of internet shutdowns.

The result is a detailed record of the killings the internet shutdown tried to hide from the world and the Iranian authorities continue to deny. The human rights report and campaign were published in full online with an archive of the victims’ biographies, 121 videos, and the data behind our findings. This marked the first time the Evidence Lab had provided open data in its Press Release.