Shayan Sardarizadeh on Identifying the Victims of Iran’s Deadly Protest Crackdown

“We do it so that people in the general public don’t have to.”

Earlier this month, days after the deadly crackdown on Iran’s protesters began, a specialized team at the BBC received a massive leak: 392 photos of dead bodies. “There was blood all over them. Their faces were mangled and disfigured,” Shayan Sardarizadeh, a senior journalist at BBC Verify, a unit at the British broadcaster that specializes in fact-checking, video verification, countering disinformation, and visual investigations, told me. “There were severe injuries to their faces and parts of their bodies,” he said. “It was crystal-clear that these were not people who died normally.” Of the 392 dead, Sardarizadeh’s team was able to identify 326 people. “There’s not much that I can say about how we got hold of those photos, to protect our source, but we went through every possible process to make sure that they were legit,” he said.

These days, photos and video from breaking-news events often reach audiences first via social media, making teams like Verify and comparable units at the New York Times, Washington Post, and others crucial to driving coverage of fast-moving stories. Following its launch, in May of 2023, Verify has investigated Israel’s strike on Gaza’s European Hospital, identified a paramilitary commander linked to a massacre in Sudan, and debunked Russian troll videos.