‘Deliberate targeting of vital body parts’: X-rays taken after Iran protests expose extent of catastrophic injuries

(Tess McClure and Deepa Parent – The Guardian) Across the planes of Anahita’s (names have been changed) face, white dots shine like a constellation. Some gleam from inside the sockets of her eyes, others are scattered over the young woman’s chin, forehead, cheekbones. A few float over the dark expanse of her brain. Each dot represents a metal sphere, about 2-5mm in size, fired from the barrel of a shotgun and revealed by the X-ray camera for a CT scan. Shot from a distance, the projectiles, known as “birdshot”, spray widely, losing some of their momentum. At close range, they can crack bone, blast through the soft tissue of the face, and easily pierce the eyeball’s delicate globe. Anahita, who is in her early 20s, has lost at least one eye, possibly both. The image of Anahita’s head is one of more than 75 sets of medical images – primarily X-rays and CT scans – shared with the Guardian from one hospital in a major city in Iran, taken over the course of a single evening during the regime’s January crackdown on protesters. The plain, grayscale images tell their own story of the deadly violence inflicted on protesters and onlookers by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). They provide further evidence of events described by doctors and protesters across Iran, where guards switched from more traditional ‘crowd control’ to opening fire with high-calibre assault rifles and shotguns. The records present a pattern of people being shot in the face, chest and genitals, a trend also seen in the 2022 “Women, life, freedom” protests. Collectively, they help to illustrate the scale of bloodshed, showing dozens of life-threatening injuries appearing at a single hospital in a midsize city within a few hours. – ‘Deliberate targeting of vital body parts’: X-rays taken after Iran protests expose extent of catastrophic injuries | Iran | The Guardian