<\/p>\n
The report,\u00a0Architects of Atrocities: State Machinery Orchestrating Crimes Against Humanity in Iran\u2019s 2022 Woman Life Freedom Uprising<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2013more than 1,000 pages long \u2013 details how Iranian authorities committed the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, enforced disappearance, imprisonment, rape and persecution on political, gender, ethnic and religious grounds in order to crush the uprising. It also documents deadly protest repression operations and command structures, identifying 87 officials who should be criminally investigated for crimes against humanity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International is calling for an\u00a0international criminal justice mechanism to be established urgently by the UN General Assembly to ensure Iranian authorities responsible for crimes against humanity are held to account and to deter further atrocities such as the large-scale protest massacres committed on 8-9 January 2026. \u00a0<\/p>\n In light of the ongoing hostilities following unlawful attacks by the USA and Israel on Iran, Amnesty International also reiterates its call for an enduring ceasefire and independent investigations into attacks committed during the conflict. The organization calls for the UN to address accountability for violations of the UN Charter and of international humanitarian law, including possible war crimes. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe extensive evidence gathered and analysed in our report leaves no doubt: Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity to crush the 2022 Woman Life Freedom uprising. They waged a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population demanding dignity, human rights and fundamental political change, pursuant to a state policy of using lethal force to obliterate dissent,\u201d said Agn\u00e8s Callamard, Amnesty International\u2019s Secretary General.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our report unveils how crimes against humanity in Iran are sustained by an architecture of impunity built into the country\u2019s constitutional, legislative, political and judicial frameworks. <\/p>\n Agn\u00e8s Callamard, Amnesty International\u2019s Secretary General<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cOur report also unveils how crimes against humanity in Iran are sustained by an architecture of impunity built into the country\u2019s constitutional, legislative, political and judicial frameworks. The horrifying result has been intensifying cycles of mass protest killings, culminating in the massacres of thousands of protesters within just 48 hours on 8-9 January 2026. The UN General Assembly must end the unconscionable normalization of\u00a0mass protest killings in Iran and create an international criminal justice mechanism aimed at prosecuting those most implicated in crimes against humanity. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis report is being published at a time when people in Iran are also facing the devastating consequences of unlawful attacks by the USA and Israel. Amnesty International unequivocally opposes violations of international law by all parties and rejects any attempt to instrumentalize the suffering of victims of human rights violations in Iran to justify unlawful attacks that inflict further civilian harm.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, Iranian people have faced brutal repression, persecution and impunity at the hands of their own authorities. Today, many are also bearing the human cost of unlawful military action carried out by the USA and Israel. A principled response requires rejecting both impunity for crimes against humanity and unlawful use of force. The international community must pursue people-centred diplomatic strategies that place civilian protection, atrocity prevention, justice and accountability at their core. After more than six months of air strikes that have killed and injured civilians, damaged the environment, and caused significant destruction of civilian infrastructure, an enduring ceasefire is urgently needed alongside independent investigations and action by the UN General Assembly to address accountability for violations of the UN Charter and of international humanitarian law and possible war crimes committed by all parties to the conflict.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International\u2019s report, released four years after the death in custody of Zhina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the \u201cmorality\u201d police sparked nationwide protests, documents how the Iranian authorities mobilized security forces armed with military-grade firearms and shotguns loaded with metal pellets and issued orders that facilitated the unlawful killing of hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including dozens of children. The crimes against humanity also included the arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture or other ill-treatment of thousands of men, women and children as well as persecution of bereaved relatives.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Alongside the report, Amnesty International is also publishing\u00a0Lives Cut Brutally Short: Victims of Crimes Against Humanity During Iran\u2019s 2022 Woman Life Freedom Uprising<\/u><\/em><\/a>, a document recording the deaths of 377 protesters and bystanders, 56 of them children, based on information and evidence gathered as part of the organization\u2019s investigation into nationwide patterns of killings by the security forces. The document includes victims\u2019 photographs and images of their grave sites where available.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to calling on the UN General Assembly to create an international justice mechanism given the political deadlock at the UN Security Council, the gravity and scale of crimes committed, and high risk of recurrence, Amnesty International also urges states to call on the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Iran to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n The organization also urges prosecution authorities around the world to initiate investigations, under universal or other forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction, against Iranian officials allegedly responsible for crimes against humanity, including the officials named in this report, and, where sufficient evidence exists, to issue arrest warrants.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International\u2019s years of research for this report involved interviews with 270 people, including protesters, former detainees, relatives of those killed or detained, eyewitnesses, lawyers, human rights defenders, journalists and medical workers. The organization also analysed over 2,000 videos and extensive documentary evidence, including official statements, leaked official documents, prosecution orders, court verdicts and forensic records.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International wrote to Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader and senior security officials to share its findings and notify the 87 officials identified in the report. At the time of publication, it has received no response.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International\u2019s investigations into crimes against humanity committed to crush the 2022 Woman Life Freedom uprising revealed that two main security forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Police Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran (known by its Persian acronym, FARAJA), led lethal protest dispersals, implementing the state policy devised through the Supreme National Security Council, State Security Council and provincial and county security councils.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n FARAJA and IRGC agents repeatedly fired into crowds, using military-grade assault rifles, handguns and shotguns loaded with metal pellets.\u00a0In addition to firing into crowds, they chased\u00a0fleeing protesters and bystanders, closing in on unarmed victims who posed no threat to the security forces or others and fatally shooting them at close range.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Among the FARAJA branches involved were the Prevention Police, including its Assistance Cohorts, and the Special Cohorts. The IRGC branches involved included the operational divisions, the provincial Security Cohorts and various Basij battalions, such as the Imam Ali Battalions and the Beit Al-Moghaddas Battalions. These IRGC branches operated under the relevant IRGC provincial corps, overseen in turn by a regional IRGC headquarters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Official statements and leaked documents analysed in the report reveal the state policy as reflected in strategy meetings, binding orders, deployment plans, allocations of money and weapons, and instructions for a \u201cfirm and severe\u201d response. One leaked order instructed forces to \u201crespond mercilessly and go as far as causing death\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Witnesses repeatedly described streets resembling battlefields as a result of relentless gunfire by the security forces. Mahshid, who protested in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province, told Amnesty International: \u201cI had never seen such scenes before\u2026 The situation was very frightening and felt like a war zone. The security forces just kept shooting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of the 377 protesters and bystanders, whose deaths Amnesty International recorded, were killed by security forces during protest dispersals between September and December 2022. Others died in custody, after release from custody or in suspicious circumstances suggesting state responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Consistent with long-standing patterns of denial and cover-up, the authorities have acknowledged only 202 deaths and falsely attributed most to non-state actors, \u201crioters\u201d or \u201carmed terrorists\u201d, despite\u00a0overwhelming\u00a0evidence to the contrary. Far from acting to stop crimes as evidence mounted, senior officials repeatedly praised security forces and instructed the continuation of operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Based on detailed documentation of the security forces involved and in-depth analysis of their command structures, Amnesty International has identified 87 Iranian officials who should be criminally investigated for crimes against humanity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The list, while not exhaustive, extends from the highest levels of Iran\u2019s security apparatus to officials operating at provincial and county level.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The list of 87 individuals comprises 62 security force commanders \u2013 including 33 commanders from the IRGC and 27 commanders from FARAJA \u2013 and 25 Ministry of Interior officials including provincial and county governors. Among them are 10 national-level officials and 77 officials at regional, provincial and county levels holding responsibilities related to the 17 counties in Kurdistan, Kermanshah and West Azerbaijan provinces on which Amnesty International conducted in-depth investigations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Among those identified is the late Supreme Leader and commander-in-chief of all armed forces, Ali Khamenei; and the late head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Mohammad Bagheri, both of whom were killed in February 2026 in air strikes carried out during the US-Israeli military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Amnesty International also names the then minister of interior, Ahmad Vahidi, who has since become the General Commander of the IRGC, and the then deputy minister of interior for police and security, Majid Mir Ahmadi.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n This investigation exposes the layers of command and coordination behind the Iranian authorities\u2019 deadly protest crackdowns. <\/p>\n Agn\u00e8s Callamard, Amnesty International<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cThis investigation exposes the layers of command and coordination behind the Iranian authorities\u2019 deadly protest crackdowns. The agents on the streets operated within a hierarchical and coordinated chain of command linking them to officials who directed, enabled, facilitated and supported crimes committed on a massive scale,\u201d said Agn\u00e8s Callamard.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe officials named remain beyond the reach of justice in Iran.\u00a0Most remain in positions from which they can unleash further deadly repression while\u00a0some even climbed\u00a0the chain of command after the crimes against humanity in 2022. The cost of continued impunity has been devastating. It is beyond time to establish an international criminal justice mechanism for Iran before another protest massacre.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n Protesters from Iran\u2019s persecuted Baluchi and Kurdish communities suffered a devastating share of the lethal repression, accounting for 62% of the total number of recorded victims while they constitute 5% and 10-15% of the country\u2019s population, respectively.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International recorded the unlawful killing of 106 Baluchi protesters and bystanders, including 20 children, by security forces in Sistan and Baluchistan province (33% of recorded victims). On 30 September 2022 alone, 87 were unlawfully killed as security forces opened fire following Friday prayers in Zahedan \u2013 a crackdown widely known as \u201cBloody Friday\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n The organization also documented the circumstances surrounding the unlawful killing of 95 Kurdish protesters and bystanders, including 13 children, in the context of protest dispersals or in militarized areas near protests that were ongoing or had recently occurred across 17 counties in Kurdistan, Kermanshah and West Azerbaijan provinces (29% of recorded victims). Most were fatally shot; others were fatally beaten, struck by tear gas canisters or deliberately run over by security force vehicles.\u00a0<\/p>\n Iman, an eyewitness in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, said: \u201cThe agents would shoot anyone in their sight, not caring if they were women, children, passersby or protesters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International found that in the provinces of Kermanshah, Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan, security forces consistently deployed designated marksman rifles, assault rifles, sub-machine guns and heavy machine guns mounted on top of pickup trucks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International has concluded that acts of murder and torture were committed against Kurdish and Baluchi protesters with discriminatory intent on political and ethnic grounds, and that that the elements of the crime against humanity of persecution are met for these targeted groups.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In Iran, impunity for crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations is systemic and intentional. \u00a0<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s constitution places the justice system under the direct control of the Supreme Leader, who is not only the commander-in-chief of the security forces, but also appoints the head of the judiciary, who in turn appoints senior judges and prosecutors. Cases involving serious human rights violations by members of the security forces are handled by military prosecution offices and courts, where judges and prosecutors can themselves come from the security forces and routinely rely on accounts from the very security bodies implicated in crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s Law on the Use of Firearms by Armed Forces in Necessary Incidents allows firearms to be used to disperse protests, in blatant disregard of international law, which permits the use of firearms only as a last resort to counter an imminent threat of death or serious injury. The law also generally exempts state agents from civil and criminal liability.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSurvivors and victims\u2019 families in Iran have been trapped in a system where the very institutions meant to deliver justice are controlled by authorities with blood on their hands. Families who seek truth and justice are persecuted,\u201d said Agn\u00e8s Callamard.\u00a0<\/p>\n Directing calls for accountability to Iranian judicial authorities complicit in crimes against humanity is detached from reality. The international community must advance international pathways to justice now. <\/p>\n Agn\u00e8s Callamard, Amnesty International<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cDirecting calls for accountability to Iranian judicial authorities complicit in crimes against humanity is detached from reality. The international community must advance international pathways to justice now. The UN General Assembly must confront the crisis of impunity that exposes people in Iran to recurring and escalating mass protest killings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Amnesty International is launching this report while people in Iran are\u00a0at risk of crimes under international law on two fronts<\/u><\/a>. On one front, they are exposed to violations of international humanitarian law since the USA and Israel unlawfully attacked Iran in violation of the UN Charter on 28 February 2026.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n On the other, they risk further crimes against humanity in the context of protest crackdowns. Iranian authorities have used the cover of \u201cwartime conditions\u201d to\u00a0intensify internal repression<\/u><\/a>, further militarizing public spaces,\u00a0openly threatening<\/u><\/a>\u00a0to carry out mass killings against protesters and dissidents, and escalating politically motivated\u00a0arbitrary executions<\/u><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Iran has been gripped by successive waves of anti-establishment protests since December 2017, as protesters have repeatedly taken to the streets demanding human rights, dignity, freedom, the end of the Islamic Republic system and transition to a new rights-respecting system of governance. Amnesty International\u2019s extensive research into the authorities\u2019 response to successive waves of protests in\u00a0December 2017-January 2018<\/u><\/a>,\u00a0November 2019<\/u><\/a>, September-December 2022 and January 2026 reveals a recurrent pattern of mass unlawful killings,\u00a0torture<\/u><\/a>,\u00a0enforced disappearance<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and other crimes under international law.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n kabarsula SLOT <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New report finds Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during their bloody suppression of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kabarsula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>In a landmark new report marking the fourth anniversary of the start of the Woman Life Freedom uprising, Amnesty International warns that those responsible for crimes against humanity committed to brutally crush nationwide protests in 2022 continue to control Iran\u2019s deadly state machinery of repression today.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
A nationwide attack carried out pursuant to state policy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Total of 87 officials identified for criminal investigation<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
Devastating toll on Kurdish and Baluchi communities<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Impunity by design\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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Background<\/strong><\/h6>\n