The commander of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Mohammad Rasouloullah Brigade has announced that 185 Basij soldiers were injured during the “mission” to suppress protests in Tehran during the 12 days since nationwide demonstrations erupted after the murder of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.
A previous commander of Mohammad Rasouloullah Brigade, Hossein Hamedani, played a decisive role in suppressing protests in Iran in 2009 during the Green Movement and is referred to as the "controller of 2009 sedition”. The brigade has also been praised by the Iranian authorities for suppressing public protests. Hamedani was later killed in action in Syria during Iran’s intervention in its civil war.
Hassan Hassanzadeh, the current commander of Tehran's Mohammad Rasoulollah Brigade, said on Wednesday that five of the injured Basij agents were in critical condition. The skull of one was broken, he said.
Hassanzadeh claimed that the injured Basij members were targeted "in dark alleys with small pistols".
Mehr News Agency also claimed in a news report that 80 police and Basij forces were injured during the recent protests in Mazandaran province.
Mehr quoted a Basij soldier, who was said to be injured and hospitalized in one of the medical centers in Sari, as saying: "We volunteered to be on standby, and on the third night it was my turn to be on shift and to go on patrol with other troops. We stopped at Imam Hassan Street in Sari and took turns resting [between patrols]. It was my turn to rest, but suddenly something hit me and, when I was changing my clothes, I realized that I had been shot and injured."
These claims have been published even as hundreds of videos have emerged showing unbridled violence by armed plainclothes officers and police forces against unarmed protesters and sometimes by-standers.
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