Senior Officials Protected, Low-Ranking Officers Receive Reduced Sentences

Lawyers for Victims Arrested, Evidence Suppressed, Families Pressured to Take “Blood Money” and Stay Silent

Center for Human Rights in Iran

January 23, 2025 – In a stark mockery of justice, Iran’s judiciary has reduced the charges against security officers involved in the 2022 Zahedan massacre, in which state forces killed over 100 protesters, and lightly sentenced only low-ranking officers. The decision follows a prosecution that was riddled with rampant judicial abuses designed to shield senior officials who ordered the crackdown from responsibility for the massacre.

The ruling reinforces the Islamic Republic’s deeply entrenched culture of impunity for state-led atrocities, and underscores the grim reality that accountability for state violence is non-existent in Iran’s courts, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said today. The Iranian judiciary’s persistent failure to prosecute high-ranking officials responsible for human rights crimes, coupled with its systematic intimidation of victims’ families, confirms there is no justice in the Islamic Republic, CHRI said.

“The judicial system of the Islamic Republic has repeatedly shown it is entirely incapable of addressing crimes committed by its own agents. Through concealment, denial of the truth, and open support for perpetrators, it has become a major obstacle to justice and accountability,” said Behnam Daraeizadeh, senior researcher and legal expert at CHRI.

A State Massacre, Killing Over 100 Protesters, Including Children

On September 30, 2022, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other state security forces opened fireon protesters from Iran’s Sunni Baluch minority in Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchestan province, killing at least 107 people, including 17 children, and injuring over 350 others. Protesters had gathered following Friday prayers to demand justice for the alleged rape of a 15-year-old Baluchi girl by the police chief of Chabahar and the killing in state custody of Mahsa Jina Amini that sparked the mass Woman, Life, Freedom uprisings across the country.

The Zahedan massacre, known as Bloody Friday, was one of the deadliest single-day state assaults against protesters during the nationwide 2022-2023 Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations, exposing the Islamic Republic’s disproportionate and systemic violence against ethnic and religious minorities in Iran.

Iran’s judiciary chief, Ali Movahedi-Rad, announced on January 13, 2025, that the charge of premeditated murder was dropped against security officers responsible for the Bloody Friday massacre, and the defendants were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison with blood money payments. The trials only targeted low-ranking officers, shielding the chain of command responsible for the massacre.

In June 2023, the Armed Forces Judicial Organization announced indictments against 11 individuals for “shooting resulting in death and injury” and 15 others for “abuse of position, shooting contrary to regulations, ignoring orders, and negligence.” The first hearing, chaired by Judge Mohammad Marzieh, barred a cameraman requested by families of the victims from filming. A second hearing in February 2024 included eyewitnesses, families, and lawyers but involved only seven low-ranking police officers as defendants, who claimed they fired into the air to disperse protesters.

“Justice cannot come from a government that is also the perpetrator. There is an urgent need for international mechanisms to address atrocities like the Bloody Friday massacre. The regime’s continued failure to hold senior officials and those involved in the crimes accountable, alongside its harassment of victims’ families, reveals the deeply entrenched impunity within the regime,” said Daraeizadeh.

Prominent Activist Reveals Details of Judicial Abuses in Zahedan Case

CHRI spoke with Fariba Balouch, a prominent Baluch human rights activist who was forced to flee Iran after the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. She revealed detailed state and judicial abuses in the Zahedan case, including the arrest of independent lawyers, the silencing of plaintiffs, the exclusion of critical evidence such as CCTV footage and eyewitness testimonies, the denial of representation, and the intimidation of victims’ families.

“When two lawyers wanted to come from Tehran to Zahedan to pursue the case, they were arrested while traveling. Judicial authorities allowed only two local lawyers trusted by the government to enter the case.

“Each of the officers who appeared in court as defendants had two lawyers, one lawyer from their employer and one personal lawyer. Meanwhile, only two lawyers represented all the plaintiffs in the case. During the two court sessions, the plaintiffs were never allowed to speak or express their opinions. Every time one of the plaintiffs wanted to make a statement or raise an issue, they were immediately reprimanded by the presiding judges.

“After the case was processed by the province’s military prosecutor, judicial authorities said they would only accept complaints from those who were in the area of ​​the Friday prayer grounds and the nearby police station on Bloody Friday. However, on Bloody Friday, many people were killed by the IRGC in the surrounding streets, but judicial authorities said that these cases were unrelated and the survivors were not allowed to lodge complaints.

“In neither of these two sessions was there a review of the CCTV footage from the police station, the mosque, or the surrounding houses and shops, despite the request from the plaintiffs and their lawyers. Also, there is information that some of the officers involved in the crime were carrying cameras, and according to witnesses, two drones were flying over the crowd that day. Several family members who had lost loved ones on Bloody Friday, witnessed the massacre themselves, and were able to identify the shooters were not allowed to attend the court sessions.”

Systematic Discrimination Against Minority Victims

Baluch people are often denied identification documents due to the government’s discriminatory marginalization of minorities. Many are falsely labeled as foreigners or illegal immigrants, but without identification, they are denied access to justice, as this case revealed. Ms. Balouch told CHRI:

“From the very beginning, the government tried to justify this crime against humanity with contradictory narratives and numbers. They first claimed many of those killed were Afghan nationals or those who did not have identification, which is why it was impossible to find who they were. This is while, according to eyewitnesses, only two of the victims were Afghans, and the identities of both of them were confirmed.

“Many of those killed did not have identification because the government had denied them the right to have an official identity since birth.

“For a long time, death certificates and burial permits were not issued for many of the Bloody Friday victims. The official medical examiner has still not issued death certificates for some of the victims.”

Ms. Balouch highlighted the government’s intimidation tactics, recounting the case of an 18-year-old teenager who lost his leg in the massacre and was later threatened with deportation to Afghanistan for refusing to accept blood money.

“At first, the judicial and security officials threatened and intimidated this teenager, who lacks official identification, to force him to accept blood money and give up pursuing the case. When he resisted and insisted that he wanted to seek justice and file a complaint, the judicial officials took away the offer of blood money and threatened to arrest him or deport him to Afghanistan.”

CHRI has learned that other plaintiffs who lacked identification faced similar threats, including deportation to Afghanistan, despite being Iranian citizens.

Failure to Enforce Verdicts Against State Perpetrators

Iran has long failed to prosecute state officials responsible for atrocities. Even in the rare cases where charges are brought against (low-level) security forces officials, sentences are relatively light and typically not enforced, and are meant to appease public outrage rather than delivering real justice, as evident in the 1999 crackdown on student protests, the 2009 deaths in the Kahrizak detention center, and the 2020 downing of passenger Flight PS752. Ms. Balouch told CHRI:

“None of the families believe the 10-year prison sentence issued to the officers will be implemented. They point to the case of the high-ranking IRGC officer (Ebrahim Kuchkazai) who raped the girl in Chabahar, which led to many protests. He has apparently been transferred to Khorasan Razavi province and taken up another position. The government is shamelessly saying to the families of the victims: ‘We killed them; come and get your blood money.’ That’s all.

“One of the victim’s family members told me: ‘We know that the officers who were sentenced to prison were not the main perpetrators of this massacre and that they all received orders from higher-ups, and those are the officials who should be tried in court.’

“The government was forced to hold these show trials, and now they have issued prison sentences to a number of their agents, but not the main perpetrators. If it were not for the pressure of the international community, and also the people in other parts of Iran, perhaps this trial and this judicial process would not have been formed at all.”

In its August 2024 report, the International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran (FFMI), established by the UN to investigate state atrocities committed during the 2022-2023 uprising in Iran, highlighted the absence of accountability mechanisms in Iran for victims of state violence and recommended alternative pathways for justice outside Iran, including prosecuting responsible officials in national courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction. The FFMI stated:

“Judges, prosecutors, intelligence officers and defense lawyers from the head of the judiciary’s approved list all worked in unison to deny and disguise violations, shield the perpetrators and punish and silence those seeking accountability.”

“The primary demands of Iran’s justice-seeking movement are transparency, truth discovery, accountability for perpetrators, and reparations for victims. The activists of the justice-seeking movement are not seeking executions or the cruel punishment of “qisas” (retributive justice). Yet identifying and holding murderers accountable and determining a fair and proportionate punishment are their undeniable rights,” Daraeizadeh said.

Read CHRI’s complete interview with Fariba Balouch here.