In his latest report, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran highlighted the recent use of international courts in holding Iranian regime authorities accountable for human rights abuses committed.
Lamenting the absence of accountability measures in Iran, Javaid Rehman pointed to recent cases where international law and universal jurisdiction were used to hold individuals and Iran accountable.
For this avenue to be pursued, Iranian officials, whether former or current, would need to be apprehended outside of Iran.
In a landmark case in 2022, former Iranian prison official Hamid Nouri was convicted of war crimes and murder by the Stockholm District Court, leveraging universal jurisdiction.
Nouri was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the 1988 prison massacres in Iran, where thousands of political prisoners were executed on the orders of Iran’s former ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The UN official also highlighted a forthcoming case at the International Court of Justice concerning the 2020 shootdown of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Canada, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, whose citizens were among those killed in the flight, are pursuing legal action against Iran for the unlawful downing of the passenger jet by the IRGC.
Initially, the Islamic Republic denied it fired the two missiles, and has yet to be held accountable for the attack that led to the death of all 176 people on board.
Rehman pointed to the absence of an independent judiciary, which has long been politicized, as one of the key causes of continued impunity and lack of accountability in the Islamic Republic.
UN Official expresses alarm over surge in executions
The UN expert’s 42-page report also gave an updated view of the Iranian regime’s gross human rights violations.
Rehman wrote that 2023 saw a spike of death penalty sentences and executions, with at least 834 people hanged – marking a 43% increase compared to the previous year.
Over half of the reported executions were for drug-related charges.
Iran also remains one of the leading executioners of women, with at least 22 women executed last year, with the report noting that many were victims of domestic violence or child marriage.
The Special Rapporteur particularly expressed alarm over the disproportionate number of executions of all kinds of members of minority communities, in particular the Baluchi and Kurdish minorities.
Death sentences handed down after unfair trials, torture and denial of legal representation disproportionately affected “ethnic and religious minorities, particularly Baluchis, in Iran,” the report read.
The latest numbers suggest at least 170 Baluchis and 181 Kurdish prisoners were executed last year.
Over 80 offenses in the Islamic Republic’s criminal justice system that are punishable by the death penalty do not meet the criteria for "most serious crimes." These include ambiguous national security charges and non-violent crimes, which contravene international human rights standards.
The report says at least 39 persons were executed after being convicted of national security charges.
The above-mentioned figures represent official executions and frequently exclude arbitrary killings perpetrated by Iranian authorities, whether in the streets amid protests or within prisons.
The Special Rapporteur called for the Islamic Republic to abolish the death penalty immediately, for all offenses.
While the UN official provided a comprehensive list of recommendations, he acknowledged that none of his previous suggestions to end institutional impunity and ensure accountability for serious human rights violations have been implemented.
Turnout
The Guardian Council’s extensive disqualification of candidates prior to the March 1 parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections gave rise to huge popular discontent. Authorities resorted to relentless propaganda and various measures to ensure the boycott did not affect the turnout.
In the face of polls conducted by government agencies that predicted a very low turnout, state media and those controlled by hardliners, as well as hardline political parties and groups launched a massive campaign before the elections, to ensure high turnout.
The polls were inexplicably extended by six hours although citizen reports indicated that the polling stations were not busy at all even during the regular voting hours.
Voting regulations including requirement of birth certificates, which was necessary in all previous elections, were abolished and voters were allowed to use one of several other forms of IDs including passports. Ballot boxes were provided in many crowded public venues in addition to polling stations.
These measures, however, backfired and many social media users alleged they were only meant to facilitate fraudulent voting.
Not only anti-regime voters, but also many former regime insiders, including Reformists, abstained from voting.
The Phenomenon of Void and Blank Votes
Authorities claim 41 percent of eligible voters participated in the elections. This figure, the lowest in the four-decade history of the Islamic Republic, seems to include the void and blank votes. The total number of votes and blank and void votes has not yet been announced.
Void and blank ballots were abnormally high in nearly every constituency. In some constituencies such as Yazd the number of blank and void ballots is higher than most of the constituency’s top elected representatives.
Blank and void votes are usually cast by those who may have been rounded up and forced to vote against their wish such as government employees, soldiers, and athletes, and could be interpreted as “protest votes”.
According to official figures the number of eligible voters has increased from 57.9 million four years ago to 61.1 million.
Suspicions of Revolutionary Guards Role in Engineering Results
Given the low turnout, the election headquarters of the interior ministry, has been taking their time, despite claims of employing better technology such as computers, to manipulate the numbers, critics say.
After the closure of the polls, the media affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, including Fars News Agency, announced what they claimed was the turnout figures before the election authorities had provided any information.
Such moves exacerbated suspicions of involvement of the Revolutionary Guards in election engineering and manipulation of numbers. The interior ministry, the principal election authority, only announced partial turnout figures two days later.
The opaque vote count process, coupled with the slow and irregular announcement of results, bears a striking resemblance to the parliamentary elections of 2004, which reformists alleged were engineered by the Khamenei-appointed Guardian Council.
In the presidential elections of 2009, the interior ministry was accused of joining forces with the Guardian Council to ensure the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In both cases, the Revolutionary Guards was accused of masterminding the manipulation of the vote.
Dubious Mandate for Those Elected
The very low number of votes cast in nearly every constituency, notwithstanding the doubts about the accuracy of the figures announced officially, casts doubt on the mandate of those who will be representing constituencies in the parliament.
In many constituencies run-off elections are required and many of those who have secured their seats in the parliament in the first round have only managed to get a fraction of the votes of those eligible in their constituencies.
In the capital Tehran, which has 30 seats and over 7.5 million eligible voters, for instance, the front-runner candidate Mahmoud Nabavian is the only one with over 500,000 votes. The other 13 elected candidates in this round have acquired between 316,000 and 487,000 votes and the remaining 16 will be chosen in the run-off.
Nabavian’s 597,000 votes suggest he will be representing less than 8 percent of the eligible voters. In another constituency – Tabriz, Azarshahr and Oskou – the top elected lawmaker’s votes fall below 100,000, making him the representative of less than 10 percent of the eligible voters.
