Iranians abroad wait in fear after protests turn deadly

Silenced by shutdown, families with loved ones in Iran suffer an excruciating wait for news following the regime’s total internet blackout.

- By Caspar Barnes and Moha Tahery report

For more than two weeks, British-Iranian NHS doctor Nima Ghadiri has looked wearily at the undelivered messages on his phone to his loved ones in Iran. The 41-year-old has uncles, aunts and young cousins spread across the country's two largest cities, Tehran and Isfahan.

Sitting inside the whitewashed walls of his clinic at Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Dr Ghadiri glances at his phone again. He checks WhatsApp, Signal and Instant Messenger. Still nothing.

On 8 January, at around 8.30pm local time, the Islamic Republic of Iran turned off all internet and mobile signals in the country and blocked signals coming in from abroad.

According to human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, the internet blackout was an attempt by the Iranian leadership to cover up the massacres that took place across 8-9 January in the crackdown against anti-government protesters.

Due in part to the internet shutdown, it is impossible to accurately estimate the number of dead, but Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, finally admitted in a speech last weekend that “several thousand” protesters had been killed.

However, according to medical reports collected by The Sunday Times from hospitals in Iran, at least 16,500-18,000 people have died so far - with a further 330,000-360,000 reportedly injured. When information has been successfully smuggled out of the country, either over the border or via satellite internet, it is rarely good news.

“My cousin’s wife got shot and died,” Dan Vahdat, a healthcare CEO, tells