At the Free Iran World Summit 2025 in Rome on July 31, Ambassador Stephen Rapp, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former Chief Prosecutor for the Rwanda Tribunal and the Sierra Leone Special Court, delivered a powerful address calling for unwavering international action to hold Iran’s ruling regime accountable for decades of crimes against humanity.
Amb. Rapp highlighted the alarming surge in executions under Tehran’s judiciary, with nearly 1,000 people hanged in 2024 and 700 already in 2025, warning of a potential repeat of the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners. He denounced the regime’s use of torture, sham trials, and fabricated charges to suppress dissent, emphasizing that these killings target individuals whose only “crime” is believing in a free and democratic Iran.
Drawing on his experience prosecuting atrocities in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Bosnia, Amb. Rapp underscored that justice for Iranian victims is possible if the global community prioritizes it, builds solid legal cases, identifies perpetrators, and ensures there is no safe haven for them. He warned that appeasing Tehran or ignoring justice in favor of political deals would perpetuate impunity. Calling for a sustained, coordinated international campaign for truth and accountability, Amb. Rapp concluded that real change in Iran must include justice for victims and survivors, sending a clear message to dictators worldwide that crimes against humanity will not go unpunished.
The full text of Amb. Rapp’s speech follows.
Thank you.
It is a great honor to be with you, because in this room and on the screen from Ashraf 3, on the screen from the streets of Tehran, and in the presence of your great elected leader, Maryam Rajavi, I see the future of a free Iran.
But it will require a great deal of work. And I’m here because I’m ready to work with you to achieve that end, to achieve change in Iran, a democratic future for that country, but a country in which there is justice, in which those who have committed these crimes will face the victims and survivors and be held to account.
We meet today at a time when the Iranian judiciary, this regime’s judiciary, is committing a torrent of executions. In 2023, 850 people were hanged. In 2024, it was almost 1,000. In this seventh month of 2025, the number has reached 700. And if that rate continues, it’ll be a new record in this decade. But of course, we all fear that that number could accelerate. We’re not talking here about numbers; we’re speaking of individuals. I saw earlier today here in pictures that people held in their hands, and outside the hall, the photos of Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani who were executed, hanged, just this Sunday morning. All of these hundreds that have been hanged and executed during these last two years were fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. I’m here today, and I think all of us are here today, to say that those victims are not forgotten. And to say to the survivors, so many in this room, that you’re not alone, that we’re with you, and that the day of justice will arrive.
Now, we see what this regime is doing. It’s not charging anyone for any conduct, any acts of terror. It’s charging people for phony crimes like “enmity against God” or “corruption on earth,” based upon confessions elicited under brutal torture that are ridiculous in their facts and found by judges after trials of only minutes. What the regime is doing is trying to suppress dissent, trying to suppress the pent-up desire for change in Iran, trying to put people in fear, trying to terrorize its own population. And now we fear that it could accelerate, that we could be headed for another time like that awful period in 1988—the victims of which we see commemorated outside this hall—when 30,000 men and women, girls and boys, were brutally, judicially murdered by this regime, charging them with holding on to beliefs when the only belief that they held on to was the idea that Iran could be a normal country, a country in which its people could decide how they would be ruled.
Now we’re hearing from the Fars News Agency, the news arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in an editorial two weeks ago, that those death sentences, those Death Commissions, were a “successful historical experience.” Well, that experience, those crimes, then and now, are crimes against humanity. They’re crimes against not only the people of Iran but against all of humankind that can be prosecuted in the dozens of countries that have put crimes against humanity in their statutes, and in any international court or tribunal that might be established in the future.
I come here because I’m an individual that’s been involved in prosecuting those cases. I came from the United States, a prosecutor, a US Attorney, like Mayor Giuliani. And we put bad guys away in Iowa too. You may have had more of them in New York. I do remember your visit to my office in ’97 when I was US Attorney. But I left there in 2000, went to the Rwanda Tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the murder of 800,000 men, women, and children in a period of only 100 days. I went from there to the Sierra Leone Special Court to prosecute the president of the neighboring country that had supported a vicious campaign of terror against the neighboring country, killing more than 50,000 people, amputating thousands of arms and legs, and committing horrendous acts of sexual violence. We were able to succeed in those courts because of a commitment, because of the resources, because we were able to marshal the support of the international community to support what we were doing. It’s not easy, but it can be done in the case of Iran as well.
Amb Stephen Rapp: We are not talking about numbers. We are talking about people executed.
The photos of #BehrouzEhsani and #MehdiHassani, and all the others. Those victims are not forgotten.
The survivors are not alone. We are with you and the day of justice will come.
The… pic.twitter.com/6IN9SficvT— Women's Committee NCRI (@womenncri) July 31, 2025
Let me just mention one example. Three weeks ago, I was in Bosnia at Srebrenica. And you may remember that 30 years ago this month, that was where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were brutally murdered in a UN safe zone, while the world could not believe that it was happening. I went to the 30th commemoration, where more of their bones were interred; now some 7,000 of those victims have had their bones returned to their families. And their families were sitting on the graves of their sons and husbands and brothers. I remember being there many times beforehand and meeting particularly with the survivors. The one that’s the most indefatigable person I’ve ever known is Munira Subašić, who heads the Mothers of Srebrenica. She lost her husband, she lost her sons, she lost 22 members of her extended family and began an international campaign to find and to identify their remains and to hold the perpetrators to justice.
It’s a challenging job, a challenging thing that she took on. And I recall visiting her many times over the years, where she saw some progress being made. She saw the world had finally begun to recognize what happened there. But she was constantly worried that the commitment would flag, that there wouldn’t be the resources, there wouldn’t be the effort to bring the perpetrators to justice. But it happened. It happened. Not by magic. Not because there was a UN Security Council resolution establishing a court. Not because there were judges in robes in the Hague that issued arrest warrants. That alone wouldn’t accomplish it. Indeed, the crimes in Srebrenica occurred when that tribunal was already sitting in the Hague. It took action to build the irrefutable evidence, to authorize peacekeepers to make arrests rather than to wave the perpetrators through the checkpoints. It took action in my own Congress to put rewards of up to $5 million on the heads of each of the perpetrators. To deny the countries who harbor them the benefits of being part of the international community. No end of sanctions, no aid, [and] no access to free markets. And most importantly, it meant not trading away justice.
Now, there was a peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia, signed at Dayton in the United States. But justice was not swept under the carpet. The Hague Tribunal in the end charged 161. And at the time that I saw Munira for the 15th anniversary, 15 years ago, in July of 2010, there were still six of those fugitives left, including the military commander that had ordered and organized the killing of those 8,000, Ratko Mladić. And I said, “We will not rest until we get all of them.” And 11 months later, the jail door had slammed behind all 161. And today, Ratko Mladić is serving a life sentence after a trial where those victims and survivors, including Munira, were able to testify.
As I said, similar things happened in Rwanda and in Sierra Leone, where we finally brought the president of the neighboring country to trial, thanks to the intervention of President Bush. But those were situations where there was a tribunal to go to. But even where there is no tribunal, justice is now possible. I’m deeply involved in the situation in Syria, a regime that survived as long as it did because of the support from Iran and from Russia. The regime under Bashar al-Assad drove half of its population from their homes, killed more than 500,000—the largest share of whom were tortured to death after being disappeared and detained. 130,000 are still missing, with their families in Damascus and Aleppo and Homs and elsewhere, not knowing yet whether their sons and their daughters, their husbands, their brothers, their sisters, are in the some 257 mass graves that have been identified.
At a meeting in @UKParliament this week I warned that Iran's dictatorship is determined to continue its horrific executions. Today Amb.Stephen Rapp, former chief of prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda issued this stark appraisal:https://t.co/Awk6W1oad1
— Lord (David) Alton (@DavidAltonHL) July 25, 2025
But even while those crimes were committed, the international community put enormous resources into the effort to document the crimes. Not just UN commissions and rapporteurs, but funds for civil society, for Syrians outside the country and inside the country to document the crimes. One organization that I now head brought out a million and a half pages of regime documents that contain the signature of Assad himself. And it was possible with those documents to take them to courts in Germany and Sweden and France, [and] now in the United States, and hold those perpetrators to account. And there was even a warrant for Assad himself for the use of chemical weapons against his own people. And now, not by some intervention from foreign powers, Syrians have overthrown that government. And the prospect for justice, a more complete truth-telling, and a more complete justice, is possible in Syria.
Why is it so important? Obviously, we all and Syrians certainly dreamed of political change, of a day that they never thought would arrive when they’d be in control of their own fate. Isn’t that enough? No, it’s not enough. Those victims and their survivors are entitled as a matter of international human rights to know the truth of what happened, to have their case investigated, and to have their perpetrators held to account. And it’s also important for people elsewhere, in other parts of the world, where similar dictatorial regimes may try to do the same thing to hold on to power, to hold on to the wealth and control that it provides them. It sends a message to each of them that you will never have a day’s rest in this life. But there will come a day, when you will be arrested, when the jail door will close behind you, and you will have to face the victims and survivors of the crimes that were committed.
What’s needed? It clearly takes more than words. First of all, it takes a commitment not to trade away justice. One could sadly imagine that if the regime today said, “Oh, we’ll forget enrichment,” people would forget about justice. That can’t be the result. We’ve had in the past moderate-sounding leaders in Iran, and they said, “We’ll make changes, you just have to help us stay in power.” That’s not an offer. That’s not an offer that can’t be accepted. There has to be justice.
It also takes the kind of thing that we’ve had in Syria. More than UN commissions, more than the great special rapporteur that wrote the report and found that these were international crimes that were committed in 1988—and that was an extremely important declaration to come from the international community. More than the fact-finding mission established by the Human Rights Council. They will write reports. But as I know as a prosecutor, when it comes to actually holding people to account, you can’t just put in a report and say, “He’s guilty.” You need evidence that meets judicial standards. You need to be able to identify the perpetrators that are available. You need to find the people that are traveling internationally. You need to find those actors that are non-Iranian that are assisting this regime, whether they’re persons or companies that are making these crimes happen. And you need to have evidence to hold them to account.
So let me say here that what we need is a campaign. The campaign that you’ve waged for political change, but a campaign for justice, to bring this to the highest level on the agenda of the international community. To insist on the effort for justice, for the development of evidence, for the pursuit of the perpetrators, for cooperation between countries so that when one is found in a country that doesn’t have jurisdiction or capacity, they will be extradited to another. That kind of commitment is essential. And the signaling of that commitment is essential to preventing the crimes of 1988 from being committed again in this decade.
The world’s resolve will not be measured by words. It requires action. And let us begin here this action for justice. Then we can see a future in which the victims and survivors of the crimes that affected everyone in this room and people across Iran—and that are a threat to all of humankind—will see the perpetrators of those crimes brought to justice and a free Iran begin tomorrow.
Thank you.