Taraneh and Romina Rahimi's torture complaint handed to the interrogator accused of torturing them

The complaint of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi, twin sisters detained in Isfahan during the Dey uprising, about torture in detention has been assigned to Mohammad Faridanizadeh, the interrogator named in that same complaint as the main perpetrator of the torture. Iran Human Rights reported the news on Thursday, 29 October 2026.

According to Iran Human Rights, human rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi had filed the complaint on behalf of the two sisters. The complaint states that Faridanizadeh was both the case interrogator and personally subjected the defendants to physical torture. The organisation says the sisters' new lawyers have been consistently barred from accessing and reading the case file, and that there is no news of Amirsalar Davoudi.

The Isfahan Shohada Square case

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi are among 16 defendants in the case known as "Isfahan's Shohada Square", who were tried at Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court; 10 of them have been sentenced to death. Taraneh was sentenced to death on a charge of "moharebeh" and Romina to long prison terms. Their family says the sentences were based on confessions extracted under torture and threats of rape, and that their mother did not recognise her daughters during a visit because of the marks of torture. According to the family, the lawyers had no access to the file until the day of the trial. A request to overturn the sentences is now before the Supreme Court.

A complaint handed to the accused

Earlier complaints by the lawyers in this case about torture and sexual abuse had gone nowhere in the courts of Isfahan. With this decision, the investigation of the torture allegation has fallen to the very person the complainants hold responsible for it. The sisters' family, together with British human rights lawyers, has taken the case to UN human rights mechanisms.

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were also named this year among the finalists for the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize. On Wednesday, UN Special Rapporteur Mai Sato said the Islamic Republic has executed at least 34 protesters.

The investigation of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi's torture complaint has been handed to an interrogator who is himself accused of torturing them.