7 House Republicans vote with Democrats on Iran war powers resolution
Iranian regime committed ‘crimes against humanity’ during protest crackdown, report says
A new report from Amnesty International warned Wednesday that “those responsible for crimes against humanity committed to brutally crush nationwide protests in 2022 continue to control Iran’s deadly state machinery of repression today.”
“The report, Architects of Atrocities: State Machinery Orchestrating Crimes Against Humanity in Iran’s 2022 Woman Life Freedom Uprising –more than 1,000 pages long – details how Iranian authorities committed the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, enforced disappearance, imprisonment, rape and persecution on political, gender, ethnic and religious grounds in order to crush the uprising,” Amnesty International said in a statement. “It also documents deadly protest repression operations and command structures, identifying 87 officials who should be criminally investigated for crimes against humanity.”
Protests erupted in Iran following the Sept. 16, 2022, death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained three days earlier by Iran’s morality police over what authorities described as “improper hijab.”
Her death sparked nationwide demonstrations that became known internationally as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. The U.N. said reports that Amini had been beaten in custody warranted an independent investigation, while Iranian authorities maintained that she died of “natural causes.”
Amnesty International said Wednesday that it is “calling for an international criminal justice mechanism to be established urgently by the U.N. General Assembly to ensure Iranian authorities responsible for crimes against humanity are held to account and to deter further atrocities such as the large-scale protest massacres committed on January 8-9, 2026.”
The organization said in 2022, agents from the Police Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps “repeatedly fired into crowds, using military-grade assault rifles, handguns and shotguns loaded with metal pellets.”
“In addition to firing into crowds, they chased fleeing protesters and bystanders, closing in on unarmed victims who posed no threat to the security forces or others and fatally shooting them at close range,” it added.
Fox News Digital’s Efrat Lachter contributed to this post.