Victims of Iran protest crackdown file complaint in Argentina.

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The quest for accountability and truth has led a group of survivors of the Iranian government’s crackdown during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protests to take unprecedented legal action. On December 16, 2025 the first criminal complaint was filed against 40 named Iranian officials for alleged crimes against humanity, including gender persecution, murder, torture, and other inhumane acts, notably the targeted blinding of protesters.

Supported by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), the filing urges Argentine judicial authorities to open a formal criminal investigation into senior officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction. Under this framework, national courts can investigate and prosecute serious international crimes regardless of where they were committed or the nationality of the perpetrators or victims. Argentina is among the states with the most expansive legal frameworks for such cases.

The complaint arises from Iran’s violent suppression of nationwide protests that erupted in September 2022 following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested by Iran’s so-called “Morality Police” for allegedly violating mandatory hijab rules. She died while in custody in Tehran, triggering months of demonstrations led largely by women and young people across the country. In response to this mass mobilisation, Iranian security forces resorted to widespread and systematic violence, shooting protesters with live ammunition and metal pellets at close range, resulting in deaths and permanent injuries, including deliberate blinding. Thousands were arbitrarily arrested, many subjected to torture and ill-treatment in detention, and some later executed following grossly unfair trials.

However, the international community did not remain indifferent. In November 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council established the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFMI) to investigate alleged human rights violations committed in the context of the crackdown. 

The 2025 complaint is therefore firmly grounded in international law and draws extensively on the FFMI’s findings. In its March 2024 report and subsequent updates, the FFMI concluded that the Islamic Republic of Iran committed crimes against humanity, including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts. 

As of 2025, the consequences of these violations remain tangible and deeply personal for the victims. Among the complainants are women deliberately shot in the eye at close range by state security forces, leaving them permanently blind, as well as family members of individuals killed during the early demonstrations, including a Kurdish woman fatally struck by metal pellets. Her death drew global attention after images of her daughter standing defiantly at her gravesite circulated widely, becoming a powerful symbol of the movement.

Despite severe injuries, lasting trauma, and ongoing intimidation, survivors have continued to speak out publicly, seeking not only accountability and the preservation of truth and evidence. In a context where women and girls in Iran continue to face entrenched discrimination and persecution, as repeatedly documented by United Nations experts, this legal action reflects a growing refusal to remain silent. By pursuing justice beyond Iran’s borders, they challenge attempts to erase the crimes committed during one of the most significant protest movements in the Islamic Republic’s history and reaffirm that even the gravest violations may ultimately be subject to accountability.

written by Clara Pescatori