Time and again, the Iranian regime has used lethal force against its own civilian population. Iranian government, security, and judicial officials are responsible for these systematic acts of violence against the civilian population. To break the cycle of recurring violence and continued impunity, ECCHR calls on the Office of the German Federal Prosecutor General to initiate structural investigations and, where appropriate, person-specific investigations into alleged international crimes in Iran.

In light of the repeated bloody suppression of civil society protests, ECCHR filed a motion with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in February 2026 to make the systematic human rights violations of the Iranian regime the subject of a structural investigation. In doing so, it renews the demand already made in 2022 to investigate the repeated brutal repression of protests, extrajudicial executions, and the structural discrimination and persecution of women and ethnic groups.

Structural investigations are not directed against individual persons but, rather, analyze patterns of violence, secure evidence, and identify victims and witnesses. Such an investigation serves as the basis for identifying specific perpetrators of systematic human rights violations in Iran and preparing for subsequent criminal proceedings.

There is a wealth of evidence of systematic acts of violence committed by members of the government, security apparatus, and judiciary that point to crimes against humanity. Since 2022, the UN Fact-Finding Mission has been collecting evidence and securing it for future proceedings, and it expressly recommends that individual states initiate structural investigations.

The regime in Tehran is responsible for the systematic torture, executions, “disappearance” of, and sexual violence against tens of thousands of people. It repeatedly uses brutal force against civil society, most recently in the crackdown on the feminist Jin-Jiyan-Azadi movement in 2022 and the anti-government protests in early 2026.

Over the weekend of 8 and 9 January 2026, Iranian security forces crushed demonstrations with massive, and at times targeted, use of firearms, killing thousands of people – in what is believed to be the bloodiest massacre of its own population since the 1979 Revolution. Human rights organizations also report torture, sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, attacks on hospitals, and a shutdown of the internet.

Legal accountability is of central importance not only for the survivors and victims of the recent massacres and their relatives. It is necessary to break the cycle of violence and impunity in Iran. In contrast, military aggression can neither end impunity nor bring about long-term social change. Generations of Iranian dissidents – many of them survivors of these crimes – live in exile in Germany and reaffirm the demand for accountability.