The testimonies of families whose children, spouses and relatives were shot dead during Iran’s latest wave of protests are not merely accounts of personal tragedy. They are legal evidence of grave international crimes unfolding in real time. The deaths of young women and men in Tehran, Kurdistan and across the country, the concealment of bodies, the coercion of families into silent burials and the enforced communications blackout together form a pattern that international law recognises with chilling clarity: crimes against humanity.
Yet despite decades of legal development since the Nuremberg trials, despite the establishment of the International Criminal Court and despite binding treaties to which most of the world claims allegiance, the Iranian state continues to kill its own citizens with near total impunity. The global response, heavy on rhetoric and light on lawful action, is increasingly indefensible.
Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, murder, persecution, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population constitute crimes against humanity. The accounts described by grieving families meet each element of this definition.
Security forces firing into crowds, shooting protesters from behind, targeting individuals in hospitals, concealing bodies, threatening families, extorting money to release corpses and preventing funeral rites are not isolated excesses. They demonstrate coordinated state policy.
The communications blackout imposed since 8 January, designed to prevent documentation and reporting, further supports the conclusion that these acts are deliberate and centrally directed. International criminal law treats such concealment as corroborative evidence of intent.
Iran is not a party to the Rome Statute. That does not render these crimes legal. It merely deprives the Court of automatic jurisdiction. Universal jurisdiction, recognised under customary international law and codified in the domestic legislation of states including Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden, permits national courts to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity regardless of where the crimes were committed.
Germany has already used this principle to convict former Syrian intelligence officials for torture and murder. The same legal pathway exists for Iranian officials, from local commanders to senior political leaders.
Extrajudicial killings and treaty violations
Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 6 protects the right to life. Article 7 prohibits torture and cruel or degrading treatment. Article 9 guarantees freedom from arbitrary detention. Article 21 protects peaceful assembly.
Every account described by the families represents a breach of these binding obligations.
Shooting protesters without warning is an extrajudicial killing under international human rights law. Denying families access to bodies and forcing secret burials violates the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death.
Threatening families with disappearance into mass graves if they speak is psychological torture within the meaning of the Convention Against Torture, to which Iran is also a party.
The cumulative violations are not marginal. They strike at the core of the modern legal order.
The repeated reference to Kurdish victims introduces an additional legal dimension: persecution on ethnic grounds.
Article 7 of the Rome Statute explicitly includes persecution against an identifiable group based on ethnicity as a crime against humanity. Historical patterns of repression against Kurds in Iran, combined with disproportionate casualties in Kurdish areas, raise serious concerns of targeted violence.
If evidence demonstrates that Kurdish protesters are being deliberately targeted, the legal classification escalates further.
The accounts of relatives being denied bodies, of arrests of family members seeking to recover corpses and of threats to bury victims in mass graves constitute enforced disappearance under international law.
Although Iran has not ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the prohibition is widely regarded as customary law.
Enforced disappearance is among the most serious international crimes because it removes victims from the protection of the law itself. It also extends suffering indefinitely to families, who are denied closure and legal remedy.
The deliberate shutdown of the internet and telecommunications violates Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects freedom of expression and the right to receive and impart information.
It also obstructs humanitarian documentation, interferes with the work of international organisations and prevents families abroad from learning whether loved ones are alive or dead.
From a legal standpoint, the blackout is not a mere technical measure. It is part of the apparatus of repression.
International law distinguishes between state responsibility and individual criminal responsibility. Iran as a state is responsible for the internationally wrongful acts committed by its organs. Senior officials may also bear personal criminal liability.
The doctrine of command responsibility applies where superiors knew or should have known of crimes and failed to prevent or punish them. Given the scale of killings, the involvement of the Revolutionary Guards and the coordination required to impose nationwide restrictions, plausible deniability is no longer credible.
The failure of the United Nations system
The United Nations Human Rights Council has previously established fact finding missions on Iran. Reports have documented patterns of unlawful killing and torture.
Yet Security Council action remains paralysed by geopolitical divisions. Russia and China have consistently shielded Tehran from binding measures.
The General Assembly may refer the situation to the International Criminal Court under Article 13 of the Rome Statute, but political will has been absent.
This paralysis undermines the credibility of the entire international legal system.
European states frequently claim that sanctions and statements are the limits of their influence. This is legally incorrect.
Under universal jurisdiction statutes, prosecutors may initiate investigations into identifiable perpetrators who travel abroad or hold assets in Europe. Many Iranian officials and their families maintain financial and educational links to European jurisdictions.
Asset freezes, arrest warrants and indictments are lawful tools. Their limited use reflects political reluctance, not legal impossibility.
Impunity in Iran does not remain confined to Iran. It emboldens other regimes to treat domestic protest as a military threat rather than a civil right.
It erodes the deterrent function of international criminal law and signals to victims that their suffering is negotiable.
For the families described, the law has already failed. Their children are dead. Their funerals were conducted under threat of violence. Their voices reach the outside world only through fragile digital channels.
Every name mentioned, every hospital admission, every morgue number, every coerced payment constitutes potential courtroom evidence.
The statements of relatives, medical records, videos of body bags, social media posts of the victims hours before death all meet the standards required for future prosecutions.
International justice moves slowly. But it does move.
Conclusion: law written in blood
The killings of Iranian protesters are not a tragic misunderstanding. They are a systematic policy of lethal repression.
International law already classifies them as crimes against humanity. The treaties exist. The courts exist. The jurisdiction exists.
What is missing is political courage.
Until prosecutions begin, until travel becomes dangerous for perpetrators, until bank accounts are frozen and arrest warrants issued, the Iranian state will continue to calculate that murder is cheaper than reform.
The families who speak today do so not only to mourn but to create a legal record. They are writing indictments with their grief.
The world claims to be governed by law.
The streets of Tehran, Kurdistan and countless unnamed cities now ask whether that claim has any meaning left at all.