Cyber Police

Designation identifiers

UKSL unique ID

IRN0001

OFSI group ID

12864

Designation type

Entity

Date designated

31 December 2020

Last updated

9 April 2025

Regimes

• The Iran (Sanctions) Regulations 2023

Designation sources

• UK

Sanctions imposed

• Asset freeze
• Director Disqualification Sanction

Official reasons

• The Iranian Cyber Police, founded in January 2011, is a unit of the Islamic Republic of Iran Police, which at the time of its inception until early 2015 was headed by Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam (listed). Ahmadi-Moqaddam underlined that the Cyber Police would take on anti-revolutionary and dissident groups who used internet-based social networks in 2009 to trigger protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In January 2012, the Cyber Police issued new guidelines for internet cafés, requiring users to provide personal information that would be kept by café owners for six months, as well as a record of the websites they visited. The rules also require café owners to install closed-circuit television cameras and maintain the recordings for six months. These new rules may create a logbook that authorities can use to track down activists or whoever is deemed a threat to national security. In June 2012, Iranian media reported that the Cyber Police would be launching a crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs). On 30 October 2012, the Cyber Police arrested the blogger Sattar Beheshti without a warrant for ‘actions against national security on social networks and Facebook’. Beheshti had criticised the Iranian government in his blog. Beheshti was found dead in his prison cell on 3 November 2012, and is believed to have been tortured to death by the Cyber Police authorities.

Other information

• The Director Disqualification Sanction was imposed on 09/04/2025.

Addresses

• Lines: Police Headquarters
• Lines: Attar street
• Lines: Vanak Square
• Lines: Tehran
• Country: Iran