Four years after the nationwide 2022 uprising, Amnesty International’s 2026 investigation concludes that those responsible for repeated unlawful killings, torture, enforced disappearances and other serious violations continue to evade justice. The organization’s finding is unequivocal: “In Iran, impunity for crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations is systemic and intentional.”
Amnesty’s 2026 investigation, Architects of Atrocities examines not only what security forces did during the 2022 protests, but what happened when victims and their families attempted to obtain justice.
Justice Under Command
Amnesty traces the problem first to the structure of Iran’s judiciary. Under Articles 110 and 157 of the constitution, the Supreme Leader appoints and can dismiss the head of the judiciary. The head of the judiciary, in turn, appoints the president of the Supreme Court and the prosecutor general and holds extensive powers over the appointment, dismissal, transfer and promotion of judges. The head of the judiciary also sits on the Supreme National Security Council.
The same Supreme Leader is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Cases concerning alleged crimes committed by members of the security forces are handled by military prosecution offices and military courts. Amnesty reports that, under an official directive, at least 50% of judges, prosecutors and personnel working in these bodies must be members of the armed forces, including the IRGC, police and military.
The report concluded: “Amnesty International’s investigation has concluded that Iran’s criminal justice system is neither willing nor able to deliver justice for the crimes against humanity committed in the country. Impunity is intentional and built into the country’s judicial, legal and constitutional system.”
The extensive evidence @amnesty reveals in our new report leaves no doubt: Iranian authorities carried out a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population demanding dignity, human rights and fundamental political change. 2/18 pic.twitter.com/BQahZTdnmQ
— Amnesty Iran (@AmnestyIran) September 17, 2026
Law as a Shield
Amnesty also identifies protections within Iranian regime law itself. Its Law on the Use of Firearms permits firearms to be used in circumstances that Amnesty says fall far below international standards, including for dispersing certain protests. Article 12 exempts state agents from civil or criminal liability when their use of firearms is deemed lawful. Article 13 can reduce the consequence of a killing to payment of diyeh, or blood money, by the responsible state institution.
Amnesty illustrates this through the killing of Mehdi Babrnejad in Ghouchan on September 21, 2022. A military court concluded that security forces had been entitled to use firearms. Babrnejad was also deemed partly at fault because authorities alleged that he had participated in the unrest. His family ultimately received only 30% of the diyeh payable for a Muslim man.
The result was not a criminal conviction for an unlawful killing. The security forces’ use of firearms was declared lawful, the victim was assigned responsibility for his own death, and the case became principally a question of compensation. Amnesty uses the case to demonstrate how the legal framework can prevent potentially unlawful killings from producing individual criminal responsibility.
Complaints Hit a Wall
“Amnesty International found that victims’ families overwhelmingly refrained from filing complaints, citing the futility of seeking justice from a judiciary integrated into the same security apparatus responsible for crimes against humanity,” the report said. Prosecutors and judicial officials, Amnesty reports, sometimes publicly absolved security forces within hours or days of killings, attributing deaths to accidents, suicide or non-state actors.
Those who did complain repeatedly encountered dead ends. Complaints concerning 14-year-old Mohammadreza Sarvari and Mohammad Javad Farmani were dismissed on the grounds that CCTV footage or eyewitness evidence was unavailable. In the case of 17-year-old Abolfazl Adinezadeh, Amnesty reports that prosecutorial authorities relied on statements from the IRGC and police denying the use of shotguns.
In the case of Fereydoon Mahmoudi, prosecutors acknowledged that members of FARAJA’s Special Cohorts had fired their weapons but closed the criminal case because the individual shooter could not be identified. In another case, concerning Pedram Azarnoush, prosecutors said they had asked the intelligence-protection branches of FARAJA and the IRGC for information identifying those involved but received no response.
Protesters in Iran have been killed, tortured or imprisoned in the thousands for demanding human rights & fundamental political change. Sign the petition to call for creating an international criminal justice mechanism for crimes against humanity in Iran. https://t.co/ddbWITeTzT
— Amnesty Iran (@AmnestyIran) September 17, 2026
Survivors Were Silenced
The same pattern appears in cases of sexual violence. Amnesty documented 45 victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence connected with the uprising. All but three refrained from filing formal complaints, principally because they feared further harm and believed the judiciary offered no realistic avenue for redress. Amnesty’s earlier investigation recorded survivors describing the judiciary as a “tool of repression rather than redress.”
The three victims who did formally complain did not obtain accountability. According to Amnesty, they were subjected to further threats or violations, or faced months of prosecutorial inaction, and eventually withdrew or stopped pursuing their complaints. Amnesty also documented pressure on families of people killed to abandon complaints, accept official explanations for deaths or accept diyeh instead of pursuing those responsible.
The report found: “Amnesty International is aware of only three complaints that advanced to trial and resulted in convictions. However, these limited successes were swiftly undermined by interventions from senior judicial and security officials, which ultimately served to exonerate perpetrators, limit redress to the payment of diyeh (blood money) by the state, block proportionate punishments and exclude commanders from liability.”
One example involved Mohammad Jameh Bozorg. An IRGC Basij member, Shahram Bazrbouy, was initially convicted of his murder. Amnesty reports that then-IRGC commander Hossein Salami asked the head of the judiciary to annul the judgment. The Supreme Court ultimately reclassified the killing from murder to “quasi-intentional homicide”; Bazrbouy received a three-year prison sentence, while the IRGC was ordered to pay diyeh.
Taken together, Amnesty’s findings describe a self-protecting political system: the security forces tasked with suppressing challenges to the clerical dictatorship operate under a hierarchy reaching the highest levels of the state, while the institutions expected to investigate their conduct are themselves structurally tied to that same political and security apparatus. Prosecutors rely on accounts from implicated security bodies; military courts adjudicate cases involving security personnel; commanders can remain outside the scope of criminal responsibility; families seeking justice face intimidation or obstruction; and even rare convictions can be weakened or reduced to state-paid compensation. Amnesty therefore describes impunity not as an occasional malfunction but as an architecture embedded in Iran’s constitutional, legislative, political and judicial frameworks.
In political terms, the mechanism is circular: the state relies on its security apparatus to defend its survival, while the institutions of that order shield the apparatus from the consequences of how it performs that function. The regime protects those who protect it.