22,000 protesters pardoned, leader says

Iran announced Monday that the country’s supreme leader has pardoned more than 22,000 people arrested in the recent anti-government protests that swept the Islamic Republic. There was no independent confirmation of the mass release.

The statement by Iran’s judiciary head, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, offered for the first time a glimpse of the full scope of the government’s crackdown that followed the demonstrations over the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the country’s morality police. It also suggests that Iran’s theocracy now feels secure enough to admit the scale of the unrest, which represented one of the most serious challenges to the establishment since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Ejehi said a total of 82,656 prisoners and those facing charges had been pardoned. Of those, some 22,628 were arrested amid the demonstrations, he said. Those pardoned had not committed theft or violent crimes, he added. His comments suggest that the true total of those detained in the demonstrations is even greater.