In the aftermath of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel and under the cover of a fragile ceasefire, Iran’s authorities have launched a new campaign of domestic repression reminiscent of their worst past atrocities. Last month, guards at Evin Prison in Tehran secretly loaded political prisoners onto 20 buses and forcibly transferred them to notorious sites of abuse and neglect, such as Qarchak and the Greater Tehran Penitentiary, and some were even taken to unknown sites.
These moves, alongside reports of torture, death sentences, solitary confinement, and enforced disappearances, and the alarming rise of executions point to a deliberate escalation that could constitute crimes against humanity under international law.
As the world looks elsewhere, Iran is turning its prisons, centers of resistance, into staging grounds for mass retaliation, and hundreds more lives will be lost if the legal community do not step in.
A Legal Emergency: The Case for International Intervention
International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and human rights instruments provide clear standards: torture, enforced disappearance, and arbitrary detention are prohibited under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a State Party. While Iran has not ratified the Convention Against Torture (CAT) or the Convention Against Enforced Disappearance, key provisions from both reflect customary international law.
Current practices, including mass prisoner transfers, systemic torture, arbitrary detention, and the denial of medical care are in clear violation of Articles 7, 9, and 10 of the ICCPR. The denial of medical treatment, in particular, breaches Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which guarantees the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Multiple reports confirm that political detainees are deprived of medication, denied hospital transfers, or discharged prematurely despite life-threatening conditions.
Moreover, under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the systematic targeting of civilians, organized killings, enforced disappearances, and political persecution may constitute crimes against humanity. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran and UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) have already raised alarms about enforced disappearances and the potential for mass executions. These warnings must be heeded before history repeats itself.
Precedent and Ominous Parallels: A Warning from 1988
The international community failed to intervene in 1988, when Iran carried out nationwide mass executions of political prisoners following the end of the Iran–Iraq war. That massacre, still unaddressed by any international tribunal, was justified by Iran’s authorities under the same pretexts of “national security” used today. Over 30,000 were executed following summary trials, most affiliated with the opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Khomenei had issued his fatwa of massacre nominally against supporters of this movement. The world stood by. The regime learned a dangerous lesson: silence is permission.
The clearest warning of history repeating came on July 27, 2025, when the regime executed political prisoners Behrouz Ehsani (70) and Mehdi Hassani (48), without notifying their families or allowing final legal counsel. Both were sentenced to death for alleged membership in the PMOI.
They were denied access to lawyers for nearly two years before their trial that lasted only minutes. They were not allowed to speak in their defense, and forced confessions extracted under torture and threats to their families, were used to convict them.
Amnesty International has warned that their executions, along with state media calls to repeat the 1988 massacre, raised fears of further politically motivated killings. Just weeks earlier, on July 7, the Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Fars News Agency had published an editorial titled “Why the 1988 Executions Should Be Repeated,” praising the massacre as a “successful historical experience” and urging similar action against current detainees.
An Ongoing Massacre in Progress
The regime has always turned inward after external conflicts, lashing out at perceived internal threats to crush dissent. The rhetoric of “spies” and “collaborators” is a prelude, not an aftermath. Following Iran’s recent international conflict, over 2,000 people have been arrested nationwide, including 18 girls under 18 in Mahabad and seven foreign nationals in several provinces. Executions are rising, more than 700 carried out this year alone. Families are silenced. Entire prisons go dark without communication. When political prisoners vanish after a transfer, we know what that means. We’ve seen it before.
A founding member of the No to Executions Tuesdays campaign, political prisoner Saeed Masouri, has warned that his transfer “‘is not about control or transfer. It is about suppression and death… Just like in 1988. Let the world hear this time that a crime is in progress.’”
Reports by Iran Human Rights Monitor (Iran HRM) reveal that nearly 50 political prisoners are currently on death row, many after enduring torture, forced confessions, and grossly unfair trials. The use of death sentences as a tool of intimidation has sharply escalated since the ceasefire. Among those condemned are at least 14 individuals charged with “waging war on God” (moharebeh) for alleged ties to the main opposition PMOI.
On July 4, 2025, ten UN Special Procedure mandates issued a rare joint statement expressing alarm at the crackdown since the June 13 hostilities, warning that state-media rhetoric calling for “surveillance” and “killings” echoes the language and justification of the 1988 atrocities.
Concrete Legal and Political Measures Needed
What is required now is urgent activation of international humanitarian and accountability mechanisms:
Emergency UN Access to Prisons
The UN must be granted immediate access to Iranian prisons, particularly Qarchak, the Greater Tehran Penitentiary, Qezel Hesar and facilities like Vakilabad and Dizelabad where disappearances and killings have occurred. The precedent exists: similar mechanisms were activated for Myanmar and North Korea under the Human Rights Council.
Triggering Universal Jurisdiction Mechanisms
In Iran, repression is systematic and systemic, and there are no domestic avenues of justice. National prosecutors in Europe and beyond must initiate investigations under the principle of universal jurisdiction for torture, enforced disappearance, and extrajudicial killings, both in relation to the recent post-war crackdowns and the 1988 massacre. Germany and Sweden have already demonstrated the feasibility of this.
Targeted Sanctions on Perpetrators
Sanctions must target judicial officials complicit in sham trials and executions – including notorious judges like Iman Afshari – alongside heads of prisons and Intelligence Ministry officials. Naming and sanctioning these individuals through mechanisms like the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime (Magnitsky-style) is critical.
Resolutions in National Parliaments and the UN
This year’s UN General Assembly resolution must address the recent political executions in Iran, including those of Behrouz Ehsani and Hassani, and condemn them unequivocally. It should also reflect the legal community’s deep concern over the risk of repeating the 1988 massacre, explicitly recalling this atrocity. To ensure this happens, the Australian government must take a leading role.
Moreover, the Australian Parliament must pass urgent resolutions demanding accountability and calling for independent investigations. These political signals – when made early – can prevent atrocity escalation.
The Moral and Legal Imperative
The silence surrounding the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners still reverberates. Survivors, families, and advocates have spent decades seeking truth and justice. I am one of them. Seeing some of the architects of that atrocity still in power today, enjoying total impunity, gives me purpose to fight for a future democratic, secular republic. We can only achieve this if international institutions act now and refuse to let history repeat itself.
Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has long called on democratic governments worldwide to condition their diplomatic and economic relations with the Iranian regime on an immediate halt to executions and the release of all political detainees. She has also presented a Ten-Point Plan for the future of Iran, which includes the abolition of the death penalty, and the establishment of an independent judiciary.
Now, the international community faces a test. Will it wait again until mass graves are unearthed before taking action? Or will it activate international mechanisms before tragedy strikes?
My Perspective is clear: mass murder must be prevented before names and stories are remembered.
Far beyond our moral obligation, this is about the credibility of a global system that claims to stand against crimes against humanity. Will we finally match the courage of those resisting inside Iran with decisive action from the outside?
What this report documents is only a fraction of the unfolding crisis—a glimpse into the machinery of repression now accelerating toward catastrophe. We still have time to act. If our words are to mean anything at all, that time is now.
Further Resources
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk calls on Iran to halt use of death penalty amid surge in executions (OHCHR, July 2025): https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/turk-calls-iran-halt-use-death-penalty-amid-worrying-surge-executions
Iran Human Rights Monitor, “The World Remained Silent While the Executioners Led Innocents to the Gallows” (28 July 2025):
Iran Human Rights Monitor, “Iran: Urgent Action to Stop a Repeat of the 1988 Massacre” (21 July 2025): https://iran-hrm.com/2025/07/21/iran-urgent-action-stop-repeat-1988massacre/
JVMI, “Iran’s State Media Calls for Repetition of 1988 Massacre, JVMI Urges UN Action” (9 July 2025): https://iran1988.org/irans-state-media-calls-for-repetition-of-1988-massacre-jvmi-urges-un-action/
Maryam Fakhar
Maryam Fakhar is a human rights activist with more than 23 years of commitment to Iran's freedom and women's rights. A member of the NCRI Women's Committee and senior analyst at Iran Human Rights Monitor, she reports atrocities and sheds light on the
suffering of political prisoners. Having lost her mother in 1988 and having seen her father persecuted under the Shah and now the present regime, Maryam brings a very personal and educated voice to Iran's human rights crisis and the fight for a democratic future.
