Decades of serious human rights violations in Iran have been accompanied by persistent impunity for those responsible. The consequences of such impunity for large-scale, state-sponsored violations do not remain neatly confined within national borders. Increasingly, in the context of Iran, they are being felt in Europe. At the same time, European jurisdictions have opportunities and the legal tools to challenge it.
German law provides a tried-and-true mechanism for addressing the lack of accountability for violations that take place in a third-party state. Through a “structural investigation,” or Strukturermittlungsverfahren, German federal prosecutors can investigate an underlying situation involving alleged international crimes without limiting the investigation at its outset to a particular suspect or incident.
That mechanism has renewed relevance following the violent repression of nationwide protests in Iran between December 2025 and January 2026.
Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA, where both of us are employed), with support from UpRights, has submitted a criminal complaint to the German Federal Prosecutor General requesting the opening of a structural investigation into the situation in Iran, including alleged crimes against humanity committed during the aforementioned crackdown. The submission argues that the factual threshold for opening an investigation is met and that a sufficient nexus with Germany weighs in favor of exercising prosecutorial discretion to open such an investigation.
That request is grounded in increasingly concrete connections between the situation in Iran and Germany and, more broadly, Europe. Victims and witnesses of Iranian state repression are already present in Europe, current and former Iranian officials have a history of travelling to European states, and many of the state institutions implicated in domestic repression are also linked to the increased transnational activity targeting perceived opponents abroad.
The underlying proposition behind a structural investigation is straightforward: where future opportunities to exercise extra-territorial jurisdiction are foreseeable but inherently unpredictable, investigations should not wait until an individual suspect happens to enter German territory. Instead, Germany can (and should) exercise its authority now to begin investigating crimes against humanity committed in Iran, pursuant to the principle of universal jurisdiction under Section 1 of Germany’s Code of Crimes Against International Law (VStGB) and Section 152(2) of Germany’s Code of Criminal Procedure, thereby preserving evidence and building the capacity to act when opportunities for individual prosecutions arise.
The December 2025 and January 2026 Crackdown
The protests that began on Dec. 28, 2025, in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar rapidly spread nationwide. HRA recorded 682 protest events across at least 203 cities, in all 31 of Iran’s provinces.
HRA’s documentation, including more than 60 interviews conducted with victims and witnesses over the past six months, indicates that the state response involved multiple, coordinated organs of the Iranian state, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij (the IRGC’s paramilitary wing), the Law Enforcement Command, intelligence and security forces, and the Judiciary. State authorities employed recurring patterns of disproportionate and unlawful force and violent crowd-dispersal tactics against predominantly unarmed protesters and bystanders. Military-grade weapons were deployed; live ammunition, pellet rounds, and tear gas were fired at close range, resulting in mass killings and large numbers of injuries. The scale of the violence across protest sites, particularly on January 8 and 9, was so extraordinary that witnesses described streets covered in blood, bodies piled into trucks for transport, and overwhelmed morgues where families searched for days for their loved ones.
HRA documented that at least 7,068 people were killed, including at least 6,548 protesters, 236 children, and 77 bystanders. Additionally, at least 53,987 people were arrested. These numbers are to be understood as verified minimums (meaning, they only include cases that could be methodologically verified).
The repression extended well beyond the unlawful use of force against demonstrators. HRA documented arbitrary arrests and mass detention, incommunicado detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and other ill-treatment, forced confessions, and interference with medical care. Documentation gathered by HRA demonstrates that protesters who survived gunshot and pellet injuries, appeared in protest footage, or were identified while seeking treatment or searching for a loved one at a hospital were reportedly pursued after the demonstrations. Some were harassed at their homes or workplaces, while others went into hiding to wait for visible injuries and scars to heal to conceal evidence of their protest participation.
Violence occurred alongside broader measures to obscure the nature and scale of the repression. Iranian authorities imposed the longest nationwide internet and telecommunications shutdown in modern history as the crackdown intensified. In conversation with HRA, witnesses across multiple protest locations described public street lighting being turned off, coinciding with a marked escalation in the use of lethal force. In the aftermath of the protests, bereaved families reported persistent harassment and pressure by state authorities to compel them to characterize relatives killed during the protests as “martyrs” aligned with the state’s narrative of the events.
The significance of these allegations for German criminal law lies not only in the gravity of individual acts, but in the fact that they amount to a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. HRA’s documentation identifies recurring methods across geographically dispersed locations, the coordinated participation of multiple state institutions, and indications that authorities acted with knowledge of the scale and character of the repression. On that basis, HRA argues that there are sufficient factual indications that multiple underlying acts constituting crimes against humanity under Section 7 of the VStGB may have been committed.
The Accountability Gap
HRA’s submission to the German Prosecutor identifies upwards of 50 individuals implicated in the crackdown alongside their role and nexus to the violations documented.
Opening a structural investigation would not constitute a judicial determination that crimes against humanity occurred, let alone that any particular individual bears criminal responsibility. It would, however, permit German prosecutors to investigate whether the available evidence substantiates those allegations and, if so, who may be responsible. This would enable future criminal proceedings whenever jurisdictional opportunities arise.
At present, there is no realistic prospect that Iranian authorities will independently investigate and prosecute the alleged crimes, largely due to complicity by the Iranian judiciary. The judiciary has long been implicated in the broader system of repression, including through its participation in practices of arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and violations of fair trial and due process guarantees against dissidents and perceived opponents. In January of 2026, HRA documented 369 televised forced confessions obtained from detained protesters under conditions of torture and coercion, an unprecedented number. Iranian authorities relied on broadly framed national security offenses to prosecute and, ultimately, execute protesters in connection with the January protests (and sentenced many more to death). According to lawyers HRA has spoken to, the aforementioned forced confessions were used in many cases against defendants at trials lasting no longer than 5 minutes, and without the presence of legal counsel.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) does not presently offer a realistic alternative to domestic accountability. Iran is not a State Party to the Rome Statute and has not lodged an Article 12(3) declaration accepting the Court’s jurisdiction for the conduct in question (nor is it at all likely to under the current power structures). Accordingly, absent another jurisdictional basis, crimes committed entirely on Iranian territory fall outside the ICC’s territorial jurisdiction unless the situation is referred to by the U.N. Security Council, a highly unlikely prospect.
The absence of a realistic avenue for accountability within Iran or before the ICC has not, however, placed serious violations in Iran beyond the scope of international accountability efforts. Germany and other European states have already invested in the infrastructure of future accountability, including by supporting international mechanisms such as the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Iran (FFMI), mandated to collect and preserve evidence for future legal proceedings, imposing targeted measures against individuals and entities implicated in serious human rights violations, and repeatedly acting collectively in response to Iranian state conduct. These measures serve distinct purposes, but they reflect a common premise: evidence should be preserved, responsibility identified, and avenues for future accountability maintained even where prosecution is not immediately possible.
What remains comparatively underdeveloped, for the situation in Iran, is the criminal investigative component capable of translating that groundwork into individual criminal cases when opportunities for prosecution arise. That is where domestic jurisdictions assume particular importance. Germany’s VStGB permits the exercise of universal jurisdiction over core international crimes irrespective of where the conduct occurred. The existence of jurisdiction, however, does not resolve the practical difficulties of investigation and prosecution. International crimes frequently involve large numbers of incidents, complex institutional structures, evidence dispersed across jurisdictions, and suspects who remain outside Germany.
The question is therefore not whether Germany can exercise universal jurisdiction over international crimes committed in Iran, but whether German prosecutors should begin developing the evidentiary basis for potential cases before a particular suspect is present in Germany, and an individual prosecution becomes possible.
The Function of a Structural Investigation
Rather than focusing initially on the criminal responsibility of a named suspect, a structural investigation allows German prosecutors to investigate the broader factual structure of the alleged crimes. The Prosecutor can collect and preserve testimonial, documentary, and digital evidence, examine patterns across individual incidents, identify relevant state institutions and units, and begin assessing the roles of those who may have planned, ordered, facilitated, or perpetrated the underlying acts.
This distinction is particularly important for international crimes committed in different ways by numerous individuals. Establishing individual criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity may require considerably more effort than merely proving that a particular underlying act occurred. Investigators need to establish the existence and character of the broader attack against the civilian population, determine the relationship between particular incidents and that broader attack, reconstruct relevant institutional structures, and establish the accused’s individual contribution, knowledge, and intent.
A structural investigation would not replace the FFMI, targeted measures, or diplomatic action that Germany and other European states already support. Rather, it would complement them by providing a domestic investigative framework through which evidence can be assessed under German criminal law, potential perpetrators and modes of liability identified, and future individual proceedings prepared before a suspect enters the territory. In fact, in this context, evidence already collected and preserved by the FFMI would be particularly valuable. The FFMI’s mandate expressly contemplates cooperation with a variety of legal proceedings, including by collecting and preserving evidence with a view to its use in future legal proceedings. A German structural investigation would therefore provide a concrete domestic avenue through which this body of evidence could contribute to future criminal accountability.
Germany’s Precedent for Structural Investigations
Beginning the evidentiary groundwork only when a suspect becomes available can place investigators at a substantial disadvantage. That understanding is already reflected in Germany’s own prosecutorial strategy. Between 2019 and 2025, the Office of the Federal Prosecutor initiated more than 150 investigations into core crimes under international law, with Germany describing structural investigations as a “central element” enabling that strategy.
For crimes committed in Syria, prosecutors opened a structural investigation in 2011, which subsequently contributed to individual trials and prosecutions beginning in 2020 as suspects came within the jurisdictional reach of German authorities. These included most notably the Koblenz Trials (Al Khatib case), and more recently the conviction of a former Syrian military doctor Alaa Mousa. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Federal Prosecutor General similarly opened a structural investigation allowing German authorities to begin collecting and securing evidence of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity for potential future proceedings.
The question presented by the situation in Iran is therefore not whether structural investigations are a useful or appropriate tool of German international-crimes practice. Germany’s own prosecutorial strategy answers that question. Rather, it is whether that established approach should now be applied to Iran.
Foreseeable but Unpredictable Presence of Perpetrators
There is an established history of current and former Iranian officials travelling to Germany and other European states, including for personal, family, and medical reasons. This does not mean that individuals potentially responsible for crimes allegedly committed during the December 2025 and January 2026 crackdown will definitely enter Germany, but it does demonstrate that future opportunities for individual proceedings should not be ruled out simply because no suspect is presently available. And while a suspect’s presence is not required for Germany to open an investigation for international crimes, it materially changes the prospects for individual proceedings, as under German law, a trial of this nature generally cannot proceed without the accused’s presence. As a result, the suspect’s presence or anticipated presence is relevant to the Federal Prosecutor’s exercise of prosecutorial discretion on whether to open an investigation.
The prosecution of Hamid Noury in Sweden further demonstrates the point. Noury was arrested after travelling to Sweden in 2019 and prosecuted for crimes committed more than three decades earlier during the 1988 prison massacres. Universal jurisdiction cases frequently depend on precisely this type of contingency. Authorities may be unable to predict which suspect will travel, when, or to which state. The effectiveness of universal jurisdiction therefore depends in part on whether prosecutors are prepared to act when that contingency materializes. In this respect, a structural investigation offers a powerful tool to facilitate long-term criminal accountability, particularly given that crimes against humanity are not subject to a statute of limitations under Section 5 of the VStGB.
The Present Availability of Witnesses and Evidence
Victims and witnesses to crimes committed in Iran, as well as their family members, are already present across Europe, bringing with them testimony, documentary material, and first-hand accounts that may prove critical to future criminal proceedings. HRA has interviewed dozens of victims, witnesses, and family members in connection with the January protests who are now in Germany, France, Norway, Austria, and Denmark, among other jurisdictions.
Germany is particularly significant in this respect. It is already home to one of the largest Iranian diaspora communities in Europe, with hundreds of thousands of people of Iranian origin living in the country. The number of victims and witnesses accessible to European investigators is also likely to grow. Periods of mass repression in Iran have repeatedly driven victims, witnesses, human rights defenders, and others at risk to leave the country in search of safety. The U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran has documented this dynamic following the 2022 protests, finding that continued repression and persecution forced victims and survivors, their families, and others supporting them to leave Iran. As repression continues, additional victims and witnesses can reasonably be expected to seek protection abroad.
The availability of evidence in Europe matters independently of whether an individual prosecution is presently possible. The preservation of testimonial evidence is time-sensitive. Digital material can disappear. Witnesses relocate. And evidence that may appear relevant only to an individual incident can assume different significance when analyzed alongside information concerning similar incidents, institutional structures, or orders issued elsewhere – especially when it comes to establishing the widespread or systemic nature of a potential crime against humanity.
A structural investigation would provide a procedural framework within which that evidence could be collected and assessed before those losses occur.
Iranian State Conduct as a European Security Concern
Iranian state-linked conduct is not exclusively an extraterritorial humanitarian concern for Germany. Iranian security and intelligence actors and associated networks have been increasingly linked to surveillance, intimidation, threats, and other forms of transnational repression targeting dissidents and perceived opponents. The consequences for Germany are particularly relevant. Members of the Iranian diaspora have faced threats and intimidation on German soil. While abroad, German-Iranian dual nationals have been subjected to harassment, kidnapping, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and, in the most extreme cases, execution in Iran.
There is also likely potential institutional overlap between the apparatus responsible for repression inside Iran and those implicated in operations abroad. That overlap does not establish that the same individuals are responsible for crimes in both contexts. But it means that understanding the structures, personnel, chains of command, and relationships involved in alleged international crimes inside Iran may also have relevance to European efforts to understand and counter Iranian transnational repression. Where individual responsibility overlaps, future prosecutions for crimes committed inside Iran could have consequences beyond accountability for those crimes, including by constraining the ability of implicated state actors to participate in or facilitate transnational repression. The prospect of criminal accountability may also have a deterrent effect on others operating within the same structures.
A Political and Institutional Environment Conducive to Accountability
German and European authorities have increasingly treated Iranian state conduct as a matter of serious security, human rights, and foreign-policy concern. German authorities have identified Iranian intelligence activity as a significant security concern amid increasing operations of Iranian state actors and associated networks across Europe. Iranian state conduct has prompted a sustained diplomatic and security response from Germany and other European states.
Germany’s leading role in pursuing accountability for crimes committed in Syria also reflects an established political and institutional commitment to extra-territorial jurisdiction. Germany itself has emphasized that Syria cases contribute to the development of substantive international criminal law and have enabled its courts and authorities to acquire experience in addressing the practical challenges of complex international-crimes proceedings. It also expressly described its universal jurisdiction practice as ensuring that Germany does not provide a “safe haven” for perpetrators of international crimes. That experience leaves Germany better equipped to address other situations, including Iran, while its stated commitment to preventing safe haven reinforces the rationale for developing cases before potential perpetrators arrive.
The present convergence of sustained scrutiny of Iran’s domestic repression, concern over Iranian state activity in Europe, and existing support for accountability mechanisms creates an opportunity to translate that attention and capacity into criminal investigative preparedness.
Investigative Capacity Is Time-Sensitive
Much of the evidence relevant to future proceedings is currently held or accessible through civil society organizations, including HRA, that have spent years documenting violations, developing trusted relationships with victims and witnesses, and building the technical capacity necessary to collect and preserve material to evidentiary standards. That capacity cannot be assumed to remain static. Civil society documentation is often supported through time-limited funding tied to particular crises or accountability initiatives, while staff, institutional knowledge, access to witnesses, and dedicated investigative resources inevitably change over time. An investigation opened now would allow prosecutors to work with organizations while those networks, expertise, and resources are available, rather than attempting to reconstruct them years later when an individual case happens to become viable.
Early engagement can also reduce the costs and practical difficulties of future investigations. Civil society organizations are presently positioned to help identify witnesses, explain documentation methodologies, provide relevant material, and assist investigators in understanding institutional structures and patterns of alleged violations. The longer that engagement is deferred, the greater the risk that prosecutors will later be required to recreate work that could have been undertaken collaboratively when the evidence, expertise, and institutional capacity were most readily available. Structural investigations therefore preserve not only evidence, but the infrastructure through which that evidence can be effectively identified, understood, and assessed.
The Case for Acting Now
HRA’s submission does not arise on a blank slate. German prosecutors have previously been asked to open a structural investigation into crimes committed in Iran. But the current request must be assessed against the evidence and circumstances that exist today.
The December 2025 and January 2026 crackdown has generated substantial new evidence concerning alleged crimes against humanity, including information relating to victims, witnesses, potential perpetrators, and the state institutions allegedly involved.
HRA’s submission provides additional factual information concerning those events while also situating them within recurring patterns of serious violations documented during earlier protest movements. At the same time, victims and evidence are increasingly accessible in Europe, future suspect availability remains plausible but unpredictable, and Germany has both the legal framework and institutional experience necessary to begin investigative work before an individual case becomes immediately practicable.
Under Section 152(2) of Germany’s Code of Criminal Procedure, the relevant question at the investigative stage is whether sufficient factual indications of a criminal offense exist. HRA argues that the evidence concerning the December 2025 and January 2026 crackdown satisfies that threshold with respect to potential crimes against humanity under Section 7 of the VStGB. HRA further argues that Germany’s nexus to the situation weighs in favor of the Federal Prosecutor General exercising its authority to investigate. Whether the Federal Prosecutor General accepts that assessment will necessarily depend on its independent evaluation of the evidence and applicable German law.
At the very least, the Federal Prosecutor General should give serious weight to the exceptional circumstances that strongly favor opening a structural investigation now.
