Ehsan Arbab's forced confession: detained blogger in handcuffs on Instagram

A video of a forced confession by Ehsan Arbab, a blogger and social media activist, was posted on his own Instagram page on Monday 26 October 2026. Ehsan Arbab has been held by the Islamic Republic's security forces since 24 September, after posting material online.

In the video, the young man's hands are cuffed. He describes his activities in the same terms the Islamic Republic's judiciary uses in political cases: "propaganda against the system" and "insulting the leadership". He also says he supported the protests and expresses regret for doing so.

A page wiped before the confession

Ehsan Arbab's Instagram page had previously been blocked, and all its content except this video has been deleted. The page description now reads "subject to the laws of the Islamic Republic". Such a scene, wiping an online activist's page and replacing its earlier content with a video of his confession, is a familiar pattern in how the security agencies deal with critical users.

No official charge has been announced against him so far, and nothing has been published about where he is held or the status of his case. His family has not spoken publicly about his arrest.

A pattern of forced confessions since the Dey uprising

Broadcasting forced confessions of detainees has been one of the Islamic Republic's main tools for intimidating society since the first days of the Dey uprising of December 2025 and January 2026. On Sunday, the IRGC Intelligence Organisation also arrested a number of citizens in Hormozgan for sending videos and aired their confessions. In the same days, the judiciary issued an indictment against Saeed Shakiba, a satirist and voice actor, on a charge of "supporting Pahlavi".

Human rights organisations have repeatedly said that confessions obtained under pressure, in detention and without access to a lawyer have no legal validity and are themselves a form of psychological torture. Even so, the Islamic Republic's security apparatus keeps publishing these videos to deter other users from writing and from supporting the protests.

Ehsan Arbab was arrested for writing online, and a video of his forced confession has replaced everything he wrote.