An independent inquiry in 2013 had urged the United Nations to investigate the widespread and systematic murder of political opponents by the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran during the 1980s.
In 2013, the Iran tribunal, which concluded its three-day session in The Hague, revealed findings of "gross human rights abuses," including torture, sexual violence, extra-judicial executions, and unjust imprisonment.
The tribunal, a result of five years of collaboration between international human rights lawyers, exiled Iranians, and victims' relatives, uncovered that as many as 20,000 individuals, predominantly youths, were allegedly killed in state prisons during that decade, according to The Guardian.
Hearings, spanning London and The Hague, involved approximately 75 witnesses, including surviving detainees, who testified about the atrocities, some appearing in person while others via videolink.
The Peace Palace in The Hague, housing the UN's international court of justice, hosted the final stage of the tribunal, with live online broadcasts. Despite invitations, the Iranian government declined to respond or participate.
The tribunal's structure was based on the model established in 1966 by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to investigate the US war record in Vietnam.
Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the tribunal's prosecutor, highlighted in his closing speech the alarming scale of executions, citing instances where men were arrested in the morning and executed by midday.
The graves of the executed were reported to stretch as far as the eye could see. Witnesses described horrifying accounts of torture, including hanging prisoners from the ceiling, flogging, sleep deprivation, and solitary confinement.
The tribunal's judgment held the Islamic Republic of Iran accountable for gross human rights violations and "crimes against humanity under customary international law as applicable to Iran in the 1980s." It recommended the UN's human rights council to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate these atrocities.
The six-judge tribunal included Michael Mansfield QC, a UK barrister, John Dugard, a South African professor of international law, and Professor Patricia Sellers, a former UN adviser on human rights.
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