Violent Aftermath: The 2009 Election and Suppression of Dissent in Iran

This preliminary report documents and analyzes the regime’s brutal suppression of dissent after the June 12, 2009 presidential elections. Hours before the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was declared the victor on election day, the regime began arresting opposition politicians, journalists and other activists. The arrests continued through the end of the year as did demonstrations that were met with violence by the regime’s security apparatus. This report documents in detail dozens of human rights abuses of Iranians and foreigners—including beatings, kidnappings, rapes and murders—and analyzes the perpetrators’ liability under Iranian and international law.

Speaking For The Dead: Survivor Accounts of Iran's 1988 Massacre

This report is a collection of witness statements documenting the experiences of five female prisoners in connection with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s summary execution of thousands of political prisoners during the summer of 1988. These witnesses recount, in vivid detail, the climate of fear, chaos and utter confusion that took hold of the prisons immediately before the executions began in July 1988. One witness describes her efforts to obtain information about her imprisoned husband, while the others provide harrowing accounts of events inside the prisons. Along with its companion report, Deadly Fatwa: Iran’s 1988 Prison Massacre, this report contributes to documenting a national tragedy that has inexplicably received little international attention. (This report was revised in January 2010 to correct inadvertent errors in a witness statement.)

Forced Confessions: Targeting Iran's Cyber-Journalists

This publication is a compilation of witness statements by three Iranian bloggers and cyber-journalists who were arrested and detained by the Iranian government in 2004 and 2005.  The witness statements are the results of interviews conducted by IHRDC staff in 2008 and 2009.  Two of the journalists—Roozbeh Mirebrahimi and Omid Memarian—were active cyber-journalists residing in and around Tehran at the time of their arrests. The third witness—Arash Sigarchi—was the Editor-in-Chief of Gilan-e Emrooz in the northern Iranian city of Rasht. They were charged with (and convicted of) moral, press, and national security crimes. The statements describe, in detail, the journalists’ arrests, detention, torture, forced confessions and eventual convictions.

Deadly Fatwa: Iran's 1988 Prison Massacre

This report documents and analyzes the Iranian government’s massacre of political prisoners in 1988. Pursuant to a fatwa issued by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, the government systematically interrogated, tortured and summarily executed thousands of political prisoners. Many families were never informed about the executions and many of the victims were buried in unmarked mass graves. The Iranian government has never identified those who were secretly executed and tortured, and has never issued an explanation for this crime.

Ctrl+Alt+Delete: Iran's Response to the Internet

This report documents Iran's response to the rise of the Internet as a form of mass media. This response includes the use of existing laws to regulate expressive activity, new internet-related laws, and the creation of multiple regulatory bodies. The regime is also censoring and filtering websites using electronic methods of control. Finally, the regime regularly arrests, detains and tortures journalists and bloggers for their expression on the Internet.

Covert Terror: Iran’s Parallel Intelligence Apparatus

This report, together with the report Mockery of Justice: the Framing of Siamak Pourzand (2008), present a comprehensive picture of the clandestine and brutal activities of the Parallel Intelligence Apparatus or nahadhayih ittila’atiyih movazi that operated in Iran during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2004. Used by the conservative establishment to maintain control over the levers of state during that period, these groups were linked to numerous government agencies including the Judiciary but operated outside the law.

Report Summary

Witness statements:

Ali Afshari, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, Ensafali Hedayat, Fariba Davoodi Mohajer, Kourosh Sehati, Mohsen Sazegara, Shahram Rafizadeh, Hassan Zarezadeh Ardeshir, Houshang Bouzari, Witness A

Crimes Against Humanity: The Islamic Republic’s Attacks on the Bahá’ís

This report complements two earlier publications, A Faith Denied The Persecution of the Bahá’ís of Iran (2006) and Community Under Siege: The Ordeal of the Bahá’ís of Shiraz (2007). It argues that the Islamic Republic’s campaign of persecution against Iran’s Bahá’ís involves acts contrary to the principles of common humanity under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, customary law and international criminal law – acts that amount to crimes against humanity.
 

Condemned by Law: Assassination of Political Dissidents Abroad

The Iranian regime’s state-sponsored campaign of political assassinations abroad does not merely violate the criminal laws of the jurisdictions in which the crimes took place – it also implicates an array of international legal norms and obligations. This report aims to supplement the two previous reports, Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination (2007), and No Safe Haven: Iran’s Global Assassination Campaign (2008) in order to construct a powerful and comprehensive indictment of the Iranian regime’s assassinations abroad based on the rule of law.
 

Mockery of Justice: The Framing of Siamak Pourzand

Mr. Siamak Pourzand, a journalist in his 70s, was abducted in November 2001 by IRI officials, held in a series of secret detention facilities, and then forced to make a televised confession to a number of serious offences he had not committed. Throughout his ordeal, the courts colluded in his mistreatment. The case against Mr. Pourzand was manufactured and exploited by hard-line conservatives in Iran's clerical establishment in order to discredit members of the reform movement.
 

No Safe Haven: Iran's Global Assassination Campaign

Since 1979, the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been linked to at least 162 extrajudicial killings of the regime’s political opponents in 19 different countries around the world. These operations flourished in contravention of both international and national legal regimes, and were planned at the highest levels of state. Many of those responsible are still in power today. The IHRDC’s new report is the most authoritative study of Iran’s global campaign of political assassination to appear to date.
 

Community Under Siege: The Ordeal of the Baha’is of Shiraz

The sentencing of twenty-two members of the Baha'i community of Shiraz to death for refusing to recant their faith in 1983 resulted in the largest mass execution of Iranian Baha’is since the Islamic Revolution. Many other members of the community were also imprisoned and abused. The ordeal of the Baha’is of Shiraz is emblematic of the treatment of the Baha'i Faith by the Islamic authorities in Iran. This report exposes the religious of intolerance of the Islamic Republic and puts a human face on the suffering of a community still under siege today.
 

Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination

A Faith Denied: The Persecution of the Baha'is of Iran

Impunity in Iran: The Death of Photojournalist Zahra Kazemi