UN expert and Bangladeshi lawyer Sara Hossain who headed a three-member investigative team said accountability for the ‘crimes against humanity’ is a concern.

The United Nations has said that 22-year-old Iranian woman Jina Mahsa Amini’s death in custody in 2022 was the result of her being assaulted, contrary to Iran’s assertions that nobody was to blame.

“Our finding about Mahsa was that her death was caused by physical violence in the custody of the authorities,” Sara Hossain of the three-member UN rapporteur team told Sapan News.

Amini, a 22-year-old woman, was taken into custody by the morality police on September 13 for “improper wearing” of the hijab. She was hospitalised as “brain dead” the same night and pronounced dead on September 16, said a UN report that was released on March 19.

The team of rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council that investigated Amini’s death and its aftermath said there was a systematic attack on women, girls and others who stood up for human rights. The “crimes against humanity” included murder, sexual violence, disappearances and other inhumane acts.

Women had played a prominent role in the months-long protest movement with its slogan “Zan, zindagai, azaadi” – women, life, freedom.

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission, established by the UN Human Rights Council in November 2022, comprised three legal experts, two of whom are from Southasia. Hossain, the mission chair, is a barrister at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, Shaheen Sardar Ali is a British-Pakistani law professor in Warwick in the United Kingdom and Viviana Krsticevic is the executive director of the Center for Justice and International Law.

By looking at what had happened previously to women taken into custody by the morality police, the team found evidence of a pattern of abuse such as beatings and assault.

Challenges of investigation

The team’s main challenge was to conduct its investigation from afar since Iranian authorities did not allow the members to visit the country. Despite being “completely open to meeting anybody”, the team could not visit the places where incidents happened or speak to those who were involved “either on the side of the protesters or on the side of the government”, said Hossain.

By speaking to witnesses and other sources, however, they gained a detailed – and grim – picture of the repression.

Another concern was the threats and harassment that Iranians face, particularly Iranian journalists, even when based outside the country. This prevents people from feeling free to speak even when they’re outside the country. As a result, the UN team had to take “a lot of precautions that limited access to people and information”.

Even so, the family members in Iran of some Iranians living outside were harassed, some lost jobs or faced arrest charges as well as other forms of threats and intimidation.

The team was also concerned by the government’s disruption of Amini’s family’s attempts to commemorate her death. Her uncle went missing for several days. Amini’s lawyer, who was supposed to accept the Sakharov Prize 2023 on her behalf in Strasbourg, was also arrested and faced multiple charges.

“I think that is a whole pattern,” said Hossain. It was evident with the families of other protesters and those involved in the protests after Amini’s death in custody. “Their family members were also repeatedly harassed.”

Brutal crackdown, abuse

The UN team found that another case was similar to that of Amini’s. On October 1, 2023, 17-year old student Armina Garavand fell into a coma after women members of the vice squad threw her to the ground in a subway station in Tehran. She died in hospital due to severe brain damage.