Several of the distinguished participants of the 24 August 2024 international conference on accountability for Iran’s atrocity crimes released a joint statement following the event. The following is the text of their statement:
Iran: Accountability for Atrocity Crimes
1988 to August 2024
It is an established fact that Iran’s current government has been and is responsible for the commission of widespread and systematic atrocity crimes for more than four decades. And yet, for numerous reasons, the regime has benefited from complete impunity. This is unacceptable.
Under the regime’s Constitution, the courts lack independence and are obligated to implement the religious rulings of the Supreme Leader. So far in 2024, more than a dozen dissidents have been executed, while many more have been condemned to death. The election of a new president in July 2024 has not changed that. Indeed, executions in Iran increased sharply after the new president took office.
Rampant and ongoing human rights violations in Iran, including a deadly crackdown on protesters and families seeking justice for the victims of torture, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of political prisoners, amount to ongoing crimes against humanity.
The most flagrant and egregious of Iran’s atrocity crimes was the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners. Following a fatwa (decree) by Ayatollah Khomeini, ordering the execution of supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), who remained steadfast in their beliefs, as many as 30,000 people, mostly PMOI supporters, were executed. Members of other groups were also executed in a second wave.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Prof. Javaid Rehman, conducted a lengthy investigation into the 1988 massacre, interviewing dozens of survivors and victims’ relatives. In July 2024, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published the report, entitled “‘Atrocity Crimes’ and Grave Violations of Human Rights Committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran (1981–1982 and 1988).”
In his report, Prof. Rehman concluded that the atrocity crimes reported represented “the commission of the worst and the most egregious human rights abuses of our living memory whereby high-ranking state officials connived, conspired, and actively engaged to plan, order, and commit crimes against humanity and genocide against the nationals of their own state.” He added:
There is considerable evidence that mass killings, torture, and other inhumane acts against members of PMOI were conducted with genocidal intent.
Khomeini’s 1988 fatwa is manifestly clear that he intentionally and purposefully ordered the mass executions of all steadfast PMOI members, an ordinance which was also subsequently implemented against members of other groups. The wilful executioners implemented Khomeini’s fatwa in full knowledge that they were committing international crimes by systematically and deliberately murdering political prisoners all across the country in a coordinated manner.
The magnitude and numbers of those involved in these crimes is enormous stretching from the Supreme Leader, the Sharia’s judges, the prosecutors, representative from the Ministry of Intelligence, members of the “death commission” and their facilitators; prison guards, members of the Revolutionary Guards and all those who facilitated the commission of these crimes in international law and their subsequent ongoing concealment.
The Special Rapporteur’s report has opened a pathway to justice and suggests that the regime’s impunity should come to an end. But the publication of the report, welcome as it is, is just a start. The international community should wholeheartedly support Prof. Rehman’s successor, Dr. Mai Sato, in continuing the quest for truth, justice, and accountability.
As recommendation (h) of the report notes, the quest for truth and justice requires protecting victims, survivors, and their families from harassment, intimidation, and reprisals by Iranian authorities. In addition, Iranian dissidents assembled in Ashraf-3, Albania, including 1,000 former political prisoners and survivors of atrocity crimes, must also be protected under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The UN Human Rights Council should, in line with the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations, establish an international accountability mechanism to investigate the crimes committed by the regime, and develop actionable measures aimed at ending impunity for Iran’s atrocity crimes, chief among them the 1988 massacre.
Furthermore, as the report notes, given the unwillingness and inability of Iran’s judicial system to conduct an independent and impartial investigation of the crimes committed by the regime, individual UN member states should make use of the principle of universal jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute Iranian officials responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other international crimes.
Finally, the international community should forcefully reject the legitimacy of the ongoing sham trials being conducted by the regime in Tehran in absentia of 104 PMOI members, and INTERPOL, which had already been informed, should make clear that no red notices will be issued against the accused. These trials are neither fair nor independent and are simply a form of political harassment and repression. States are required not to recognize these unlawful proceedings, which violate international human rights law, and no state should even consider extraditing the accused to Iran so that their names can be added to the list of those murdered by the regime.
International law requires accountability for the commission of atrocity crimes, that are an inalienable part of international law. There can, and must, be no exception. Impunity is not an option. The victims of these outrages, who have suffered for decades, deserve truth, justice, and accountability. Iran’s increasing audacity in committing such offenses can no longer be greeted with silence. Silence only emboldens the clerical regime to expand its repression of dissidents within and beyond Iran’s borders.
As jurists, legal practitioners, scholars, and human rights advocates, we are committed to defending and promoting these principles, and we will do our utmost to ensure that our voices, and the voices of the victims of these crimes, are heard.
SIGNED:
Prof. Leila Sadat
Special Adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the ICC Prosecutor (2012-2023); Director, Crimes Against Humanity Initiative; James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law, Washington University School of Law
Prof. William A. Schabas
Chair of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict (2014-2015); President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (2009-2011)
Dr. Mark Ellis
Executive Director, International Bar Association (IBA)
Prof. Wolfgang Schomburg
Judge, UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) (2001-2008); former Judge, UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR); Judge, Federal Supreme Court of Germany (1995–2000)
Prof. Claudio Grossman
Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor (2021-present); Member, UN International Law Commission (ILC) (2016-present)
Prof. Jeremy Sarkin
Chair-Rapporteur and Member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) (2008-2014)
Tahar Boumedra
President, Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran (JVMI); former Chief of UNAMI Human Rights Office and Representative of the HCHR in Iraq
Prof. Steven M. Schneebaum
Adjunct Professor of International Law, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University
Kenneth Lewis
Lawyer for the PMOI in the Swedish trial of former Iranian prison official Hamid Noury
Gilles Paruelle
Counsel, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Amb. Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs (2001-2005)
Dr. Anna Adamska-Gallant
Judge in Poland (2003-2013); International Judge of the Supreme Court of Kosovo (2015-2018)