The organization says in a statement that the cause is "the set of crimes under international law and the human rights violations" committed since the 1980s and during the mandate" of Raisi, who died in the helicopter disaster on Sunday.

"While he was alive, Ebrahim Raisi should have been criminally investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture. His death should not deprive victims and their families of their right to truth, nor should it let all the other accomplices in his crimes off the hook," said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"For decades, perpetrators with criminal responsibility have enjoyed systematic impunity, which continues to prevail in Iran. The international community must act now to establish avenues for accountability for victims of crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations committed by Ebrahim Raisi and other Iranian officials," Eltahawy warned.

According to Amnesty International, over the past 44 years Raisi has been directly involved in or overseen the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions of thousands of political dissidents in the 1980s, the unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and torture of thousands of protesters, and the violent persecution of women and girls who defied the compulsory veil, among other serious human rights violations.

The human rights organization recalls that, in 1988, Raisi was a member of the "death commission" that was responsible for the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions of several thousand political dissidents in Evin prison in Tehran and Gohardasht prison in Alborz province.

"Truth, justice and reparations have since been cruelly denied to survivors and families of victims for decades. Many have been persecuted for seeking truth and redress. In May 2018, Ebrahim Raisi publicly defended the mass killings, describing them as ‘one of the achievements the [Islamic Republic] system is proud of’,” Amnesty International points out.

Amnesty International also denounced that, throughout the decades in which Raisi held various judicial positions -- including that of head of the judiciary (2019 to 2021) -- "he was one of the main drivers of human rights violations and crimes under international law".

"He subjected tens of thousands of people to arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment, grossly unfair trials and punishments that violate the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, such as flogging, amputation and stoning," Amnesty International adds.

From September to December 2022, as head of state of Iran and chairman of the Supreme National Security Council, during the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising, Raisi praised and directed the security forces' violent crackdown on the nationwide protests.

"This resulted in the killing of hundreds of protesters and bystanders, the injuring of thousands, and the use of torture and other ill-treatment – including rape and other forms of sexual violence – against protesters in detention," Amnesty International stresses.

Amnesty International also accuses Raisi, who became president in 2021, of calling for increased use of the death penalty in a new "war on drugs". Since then, Amnesty International continues, executions have increased sharply, culminating in the execution of at least 853 people in 2023, a 172% increase over 2021.

In 2022, Raisi promoted a stricter enforcement of laws on compulsory veiling, which had a severe impact on women, and in September of that year, the young woman Mahsa Amini died in custody, three days after being violently detained by Iran's "morality" police.

"Since the uprising, the Iranian authorities [...] have persecuted women and girls in a violent campaign of repression to enforce Iran’s discriminatory compulsory veiling laws," Amnesty International adds in the three-page statement.

"Ebrahim Raisi’s legacy serves as a reminder of the impunity crisis in Iran, where those suspected of crimes under international law not only escape accountability but are rewarded with praise and high office in the Islamic Republic’s machinery of repression, which is set to continue without fundamental constitutional, legislative and institutional reforms," Eltahawy said.

The Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa demanded "criminal investigations into Iranian officials suspected of crimes under international law, in line with the principle of universal jurisdiction, to ensure that survivors and families of victims can see the perpetrators face justice and be held accountable for their crimes".

According to the media and Iranian authorities, Ebrahim Raisi died on the 19th of this month, when the helicopter he was traveling in crashed in the Varzeghan region of East Azerbaijan province, Iran.

Everyone on board the helicopter died, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the pilots and the crew.

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