After a decade of documenting perpetrators, on the occasion of International Human Rights Day, Justice for Iran launches Faces of Crime, the Database of Human Rights Violators in Iran.
The database demonstrates profiles of only a part of hundreds of perpetrators of grave violations of human rights who have so far been identified by Justice for Iran. It consists of more than 220 individuals and a multitude of institutions that have been involved in more than 430 incidents of grave human rights violations. The current time frame spans across the past four decades, following the inception of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Amongst other rights, violations include 156 incidents of violations of the Right to Life against individuals or large groups of prisoners, 106 incidents of violations of the Right to Freedom of Assembly, and 62 incidents of violation of the Prohibition of Torture.
Faces of Crime is an interactive tool that provides information about the perpetrator’s personal details and positions, and locations where they committed human rights abuses. This is done through pages allocated to the profiles of each perpetrator. The user can filter information by type of rights violated, or by the government institution involved in the abuses. The power structure of the Islamic Republic as it links to human rights abuses is also available on a separate page in the database.
This database also shows the organisational relationship between the violators and the government institutions, as well as the scope of the institutions involved in human rights violations in Iran, and the organisational position of these institutions within the power structure of the Islamic Republic.
“This database demonstrates that human rights violators are holding high ranking official positions in the IRI. Not only have they not been held accountable for the violations, they are often promoted to higher positions. This database shows that key state institutions including the executive, military and even the so-called cultural entities are deeply involved in gross human rights violations. Most importantly, entities that are by law tasked to protect the human rights and security of individuals are the main perpetrators responsible for majority of the violations of human rights”; Dr Mohammad Nayyeri, lawyer and Co-Director of Justice for Iran said.
Faces of Crime has identified perpetrators of some of the most serious human rights violations, including those amounting to crimes against humanity. Examples include those responsible for: the 1988 massacre; the serial killings of dissident writers and intellectuals in 1999; torture and extraction of forced confessions from political prisoners; the attack on a University of Tehran dormitory in July 1999; the crackdowns on student movements in 1999 and popular protests in 2009-2010, December 2017-January 2018; and the killing of protestors during the November 2019 protests.
The evidence incriminating these perpetrators, profiled by Faces of Crime, has mainly been collected in the form ofindependent investigations into these events, carried out by Justice for Iran over the past ten years. They are also supplemented by the research reports of other human rights organisation and official statements.
The list of violators in this database does not yet include all state violators, or all cases of human rights violations by these violators. Faces of Crime is a working project that is being updated by – upon rigorous verification- information received from survivors, witnesses, and those who hold other forms of validated evidence. These contributions assist in fulfilling the requirements to hold these perpetrators to account for their violations.
“This database is a useful instrument and an important step for the systematic documentation of human rights violations and recording information about the perpetrators. The next step is to take advantage of the documents and information provided to use international political and legal mechanisms such as Magnistky laws, and universal jurisdiction in order to hold to account and prosecute the perpetrators”; Nayyeri said.
To access Faces of Crime; the Database of Human Rights Violators, click here.