A coalition of individuals affected by the state-led crackdown amid the 2022 "Women, Life, Freedom" protests has initiated a landmark criminal complaint naming 4 dozen named Iranian figures of purported human rights violations.
Case Filing Launched in the Argentinian System
The petition for a legal inquiry to be initiated was lodged within the Argentinian judicial framework. This step was made by a coalition with support from a human rights legal group. The Argentinian courts are noted for accommodating international law complaints.
The filing claims that the reaction from Iran's security forces to the demonstrations included "firing bullets, paintball guns, metal pellets not intended for close-range use, and additional ammunition at civilians." The document further states arbitrary roundups, abuse while imprisoned, and killings of protesters that are said to continue to this day.
Identities Withheld
Named individuals representing the range of Iran's intelligence apparatus have been identified in the legal documents, but their identities are currently being withheld from the public.
Personal Stories Motivate the Case
One of the complainants, based in Britain Mahsa Piraei, stated that the objective "goes beyond revenge in a individual way, but justice and truth." Her parent, Minoo Majidi, in her sixties, was killed by gunfire in September 2022. Autopsy reports indicated more than 167 harmful shots had been fired into her posterior at point-blank range. She had been participating in a street protest regarding the demise of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who died after arrest.
Piraei, one of Majidi's three offspring, was residing abroad at the moment of her mother's violent demise. She went back to Iran at great risk to pay respects at the burial site. Her sister Roya shared a photograph of herself by their parent's burial site with her scalp shaved on a personal social media account. A contact shared the photo, which went viral, eventually compelling Roya to seek exile for Turkey.
Piraei stated: "By means of official complaints and record-keeping the aim is to maintain records, name crimes and avoid historical oblivion." She characterized her parent's killing as "not an isolated incident but part of a systematic practice."
Other Litigants Are Those Shot in the Eye
The other two litigants who can be identified are Kowsar Eftekhari and Mersedeh Shahinkar, both survivors of blinding at point-blank by projectile weapons.
Eftekhari, a young scholar, was hit in the right eye in October 2022. She had been in the streets for an extended period, seeing fellow protesters being shot with live ammunition and being assaulted herself with shock weapons. During a protest on October 12th, she was at a rally near a university when a plainclothes officer struck her with several projectiles from a distance of about a meter. He then allegedly shot her her face when she did not respond to his order to leave. A video of the assault showing blood flowing from her eye went viral, and she was later granted asylum in Germany.
Shahinkar, aged 38 when assaulted on 18 October, only understood what had happened when she noticed something warm on her face. Fellow protesters cautioned her not to board an ambulance for fear of being delivered to a detention center. When she finally got to a treatment facility, a employee instructed her to go away because they did not help demonstrators. A physician saw her and sent her to a medical center, where Shahinkar claimed a stone had inadvertently damaged her eye so she would not be denied treatment. She posted details of her injuries online, and in the new year, plainclothes officers came for her, causing her to leave the country. She later collected a prestigious international award as a figure of the movement.
International Law Principle Creates Avenue for Action
The individuals seeking the inquiry say that the case is not seen just as a paper exercise with slim prospect of a concrete result. This legal principle allows allegations to be investigated in a different state even if the violation did not happen in that country and the offender is not located there. The Argentinian system has particularly permissive rules on such matters in the world.
The concept of universal jurisdiction has in the past led to multiple sentences and the initiation of prosecutions involving offenses perpetrated in dozens of nations. Cases are presently being prosecuted in multiple different countries.
As the petition is exclusively for a judicial probe, and this is not a civil lawsuit, there is no request by the litigants for money damages. This filing would not constitute the first case against Iranian figures brought in Argentina.
