International experts warn that impunity for the 1988 massacre has enabled the Iranian regime to reproduce the same pattern of repression, executions, and enforced disappearances today
The unresolved legacy of Iran’s 1988 massacre is increasingly being recognized as central to understanding the regime’s continuing use of executions, political repression, and enforced disappearances.
Speaking at an international online conference attended by former and current United Nations officials, international prosecutors, and human-rights experts, Professor Javaid Rehman, former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Stephen Rapp, and Grażyna Baranowska, Vice-Chair of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, each highlighted a common theme: impunity for past crimes has enabled new crimes.
The 1988 massacre as a continuing crime
Professor Javaid Rehman recalled the findings of his final report as UN Special Rapporteur, published in July 2024. His investigation documented the systematic targeting of tens of thousands of political opponents through arbitrary and extrajudicial executions, torture, and enforced disappearances between 1979 and 1988.
He characterized these crimes as potentially amounting to crimes against humanity and genocide, emphasizing the involvement of senior Iranian officials in planning, ordering, and carrying out the atrocities. According to Rehman, the absence of accountability for those responsible created conditions in which similar crimes could be repeated.
He also warned that the ideological and legal foundations used to justify the 1988 killings have not disappeared. Concepts such as moharebeh and baghi have continued to be employed by the regime as instruments of repression and as legal pretexts for imposing death sentences on political opponents.
In the aftermath of the nationwide protests that began in September 2022, he noted, the regime intensified its use of politically motivated death sentences against supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and members of the Resistance Units. In these cases, the determining factor is not necessarily an ordinary criminal act, but political belief, organizational affiliation, or refusal to submit to the regime.
Rehman pointed to a significant development at the international level: the UN General Assembly’s annual resolution on Iran in December 2025 reportedly recognized the 1988 massacre for the first time. He argued, however, that recognition alone is insufficient. The international community must explicitly connect the 1988 massacre with the grave human-rights violations continuing in Iran today.
He urged governments to support an accountability mechanism and make greater use of universal jurisdiction to pursue perpetrators of international crimes. He also called on the UN to address the continuing impunity surrounding the massacre.
Impunity has consequences
Stephen Rapp, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, placed the current wave of executions directly within the context of this impunity.
In his assessment, the failure of the international community to hold perpetrators accountable after the killing of approximately 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 conveyed to the Iranian regime that it could commit mass atrocities without serious consequences.
Rapp argued that this has produced a recurring pattern. Whenever the regime feels seriously threatened, it resorts to mass arrests, intimidation, and executions or death sentences to spread fear throughout society. Families of protesters and political opponents are deliberately placed under pressure, while the threat of execution is used to deter further dissent.
He linked this pattern to the crackdown following the most recent nationwide protests, referring to large-scale arrests and killings and warning that many detainees remain at risk.
At the same time, Rapp stressed that foreign military intervention should not be confused with a solution to Iran’s fundamental political crisis. Military confrontation, he argued, can divert international attention from the regime’s own crimes and allow it to portray domestic opponents as foreign agents or traitors. The priority, in his view, should remain the Iranian people’s right to determine their own democratic future.
Lessons from other countries
Rapp pointed to Bosnia and Syria as examples demonstrating that accountability can remain possible even years after mass atrocities.
He cited the prosecution of Ratko Mladić for the Srebrenica genocide and other crimes as evidence that perpetrators can eventually be brought before courts, even after lengthy periods of evading justice. He also highlighted universal-jurisdiction cases involving Syrian officials and perpetrators in European countries, including Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, and France.
These cases, he argued, demonstrated that national courts can play an important role when an international tribunal is unavailable. Investigations, indictments, judicial proceedings, UN mechanisms, and diplomatic pressure can collectively challenge the assumption that perpetrators will remain beyond the reach of justice.
For Iran, the lesson is clear: accountability should not be postponed until political circumstances change. Governments and international institutions can use existing legal mechanisms now to document crimes, preserve evidence, identify perpetrators, and pursue prosecutions.
Enforced disappearances remain a continuing crime
Grażyna Baranowska brought another dimension of the same crisis into focus: enforced disappearance.
She explained that enforced disappearance occurs when state authorities deprive a person of liberty and conceal the person’s fate or whereabouts. Under international law, the violation is continuing for as long as the victim’s fate or location remains unknown.
This has particular significance for the families of those disappeared in Iran during the 1980s. Baranowska said the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances currently has 617 unresolved Iranian cases before it. She stressed that families themselves become victims because they are denied information about the fate of their loved ones.
The issue is not confined to the past. The UN Working Group has also raised concerns over disappearances involving religious and ethnic minorities and protesters in contemporary Iran. Even when detainees reappear after several days or weeks, the period during which authorities concealed their fate can constitute enforced disappearance.
Baranowska further emphasized the importance of locating and protecting mass graves and unidentified burial sites, conducting investigations according to international standards, and preserving the memory of victims. Families have a right to truth and reparation, while states have an obligation to investigate crimes and bring those responsible to justice.
Breaking the cycle of impunity
The three interventions converged on a fundamental conclusion: Iran’s current wave of repression cannot be separated from the unresolved crimes of the past.
The 1988 massacre was not only a historical atrocity. The speakers argued that the failure to establish accountability for those crimes helped create an environment in which political executions, arbitrary detention, intimidation, and enforced disappearances could continue.
Breaking this cycle therefore requires more than statements of condemnation. It requires mechanisms capable of establishing the truth, preserving evidence, identifying perpetrators, supporting victims and their families, and pursuing accountability through national and international law.
For decades, families of the victims of Iran’s 1988 massacre have demanded answers. As executions and political repression continue, their demand for justice has acquired renewed urgency. The international experts’ message is that confronting the crimes of 1988 is not merely an act of remembrance—it is an essential step toward preventing their repetition.
