The daytime protests across the Islamic republic have been largely peaceful. But Iranians shudder at the violence unleashed at night, with the shadowy vigilantes known as Basijis beating, looting and sometimes gunning down protesters they tracked during the day.

The vigilantes planned to take their fight into the daylight on Friday, with the public relations department of Ansar Hezbollah — the most public face of the Basij — announcing that they planned a public demonstration to expose the “seditious conspiracy” being carried out by “agitating hooligans”.

“We invite the vigilant people who are always in the arena to make their loud objections heard in response to the babbling of this tribe,” said the announcement, on the website Parsine.

The announcement could be the first indication that the Government was taking its gloves off, Iranian analysts noted, because up to this point the Basijis, usuallt the shock troops to end public protests, have been working in stealth.

“It is the special brigades of the Revolutionary Guards who right now, especially at night, trap young demonstrators and kill them,” said Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian exile who helped write the charter for the Revolutionary Guards in 1979 when he was an aide to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

“That is one way the regime avoids the responsibility for these murders. It can say, ‘We don’t know who they are’.”

The death toll now stands at 13, said Shahram Kholdi, a student at the University of Manchester in England, who is building a website to track all killings.

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