The last time Ottawa resident Mahnoosh Naseri spoke to her father, he decided to take to the streets of Tehran to protest the Iranian regime.

It was January 7, and Iranians fed up with the regime’s corruption, economic mismanagement, and repressive religious rules were coming together like never before.

Two days later, her father left his apartment to join the demonstrators and did not return home. It took his family four days to find him. He was shot dead.

“He no longer cared about his safety. What he cared about was the future of Iranian children,” Naseri told Global News in an interview.

Almost a month after Iranians posed the biggest challenge to the Islamic regime that ruled them for half a century, the shocking number of dead is becoming increasingly clear.

The protests began in late December and grew until January 8, when Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the deposed Shah of Iran, called for mass protests.

Millions marched in major cities, reassured by US President Donald Trump, who promised that Iran would “come to the rescue” if it killed the protesters.

The uprising was the largest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and fighters loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responded with predictable violence. Activists say tens of thousands may have been killed.

To cover up the carnage, the regime cut off internet access, but as the bodies piled up, families like Nasser’s are discovering just how bad it was.

“This has touched a lot of people in the community,” he said But EhsasiCanadian of Iranian descent and Member of Parliament for the Willowdale riding in Toronto.

Ehsassi said he had heard from community members whose friends and relatives had been detained or killed, and that January 8 and 9 were “particularly bloody”.

Although he did not know the Canadian government’s casualty estimates, the regime’s own figures mean it is considered one of the bloodiest conflicts of its kind in modern history.

“I have no doubt that the number of people who died is very, very high, even by the standards of the Iranian regime,” the lawmaker said in an interview.

In recent interviews, Global News spoke with Iranian-Canadians about the fate of those close to them who participated in the anti-regime events on January 8 and 9.

“We slowly learned the truth, and the truth was that there was a massacre,” said Azam Jangravi, a technology industry expert in Toronto.

The victims included 10 family members, Jangravi said, including one who was shot in the chest during protests in Iran’s third-largest city of Esfahan.

The relative did not die at first, but was afraid to seek medical attention because security forces were visiting hospitals to arrest protesters, she said.

After hiding in the house for two days, he succumbed to his injuries, said Jangravi, who fled Iran after being convicted of showing her hair in public.

Another Iranian-Canadian, Pieman Azimi, said his nephew, a 20-year-old mechanic, was killed during the demonstration.

His family searched police stations and hospitals all day until they found him in a sea of ​​bodies, said Azimi, who lives in Ottawa.

Another Ottawa resident described shooting a friend, who survived being shot in the waist. Later, a friend told her how the suppression tactics had escalated.

“The first two days they were shooting marbles,” said Nona Dourandish. “And then they decided to bring in military forces and their special forces.”

Authorities used drones to monitor the city, and when crowds gathered to shout anti-regime slogans, gunmen quickly arrived on the scene, she said, relaying her friend’s story.

“He said they basically shot people in the face, in the chest, so they wouldn’t get up. So they wouldn’t survive,” Dourandish said.

Naseri was close to Father Hossein. “I can’t believe my dad is gone,” she said. It is even harder to believe that he was among so many killed that day.

Growing up in Tehran, Naseri said she was repeatedly detained for violating the regime’s strict dress code for women.

Her transgressions included not covering all of her hair with a headscarf and wearing shirts and pants that were deemed too short or too tight, she said.

After the regime’s brutal crackdown on women’s rights activists in 2022, she joined her brother in Ottawa in September 2023.

A 73-year-old retired accountant from Tehran, her father visited her in Ottawa last summer. He spent three months in the capital, attending her wedding and her brother’s graduation ceremony.

“I’m so glad I had the opportunity to show him some cities in Canada. He really loved the nature here, the museums and the freedom,” said Naseri.

Although he disliked the Islamic government, Hossein had previously refrained from participating in protests, fearing it might affect his two children.

But early last month, Naseri spoke to him on WhatsApp and he decided it was time to come out and support the protests.

“He told me, ‘I know you’re safe. You’re here. There’s no danger for you two. And right now I feel free to go and, like everyone else, look for what we want,'” she said.

Hossein left home around 7pm on January 9, she said.

Videos and eyewitness testimonies collected Amnesty International show that that night the security forces were stationed on the roofs and opened fire.

The “deadly operation” was carried out primarily by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iranian police, the rights group said.

Thousands died, making the past month “the deadliest period of repression by Iranian authorities in decades of Amnesty’s research,” according to the group.

Naseri began to worry when she did not hear from her father. She sent a message to a friend who had internet access. A week later, her aunt called.

The family searched for the bodies until they found Hossein. He was hit in the main artery of his leg, his daughter said.

Communicating with her family has been a challenge, amid fears that international calls are being tracked. Naseri still knows very little about what happened, but she believes her father could have been saved if he had made it to the hospital.

She blames Revolutionary Guardwhose mission is to defend the Islamic government against internal and external threats. “The IRGC has a long track record of killing protesters.”

Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an anti-regime militant group, announced Hossein’s death, calling him one of the “martyrs of the heroic national uprising.”

Canada joined Australia and the European Union on January 9 condemning “the killing of protesters, the use of violence, arbitrary arrests and intimidation tactics by the Iranian regime against its own people.”

But Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman said the federal government must do more than release statements.

“Canada must take advantage of the fragility of the regime,” she said in a statement to Global News calling on the government to establish a registry for those involved in foreign interference.

She also called on Ottawa to expel members of the Iranian regime who have arrived in Canada and to “work with allies to allow the free flow of information to the brave people of Iran.”

“Everything would be a step above nothing.”

Liberal MP Ehasassi said the government is working on a collective response with allies, and that Canada has already listed the IRGC as a terrorist group.

But Ehsassi said Canada was “well ahead” of other countries in adopting measures against Iran, including a ban on senior members of the regime.

Last week, the European Union followed suit, sanctioning the Revolutionary Guard, saying that “repression cannot go unanswered.”

“Our officials in various departments are in touch with each other, deciding what we can do,” Ehsassi said. “Obviously, I’d like to see us do a lot more. I think the Iranian-Canadian community would like to see that,” he said.

“I have every confidence that there will be a range of measures.”

The US is moving military assets to the Middle East, and on Monday Trump warned Iran of “bad things” but has so far refrained from attacking, and Khamanei said a US strike would spark a regional war.

Naseri believes that the era of Iran ruled by extremist mullahs is over. “This protest shows that the people of Iran no longer accept this regime.”

“They don’t want that.”

Stewart.Bell@globalnews