Disclaimer: Asymmetrical Haircuts is produced as a podcast, meaning it is meant to be listened to and not read. Because of this, we recommend that you listen to the episode while reading, because the written word does not do justice to the emotion or tone used by our speakers. However, because we recognise there might be bandwidth issues or you might be using a hearing aid, we have provided written transcripts for all our available episodes.

[INTRO TUNE]

Janet: 00:42  Hi Steph, 

Stephanie:  Hi Janet. 

Janet: 00:43  I’m sure everyone who listens to this pod has been following what’s been happening in Iran. Before we actually launch into this week’s podcast, looking at a fairly specific accountability avenue, considering the fact that it’s such a big issue, I thought that we might have a bit of a Stephapedia, so over to you Steph.

Stephanie: 01:03  Yeah, so what we’re seeing in Iran now is anti-government protests across the country, which erupted in late December and has gone through over 70 towns and cities in Iran. And an Iranian official, and this comes from the Reuters blurb, said that authorities have verified at least 5000 deaths. Now, this not from Reuters, but what we’ve heard is that in the past, these figures have doubled or tripled once more information comes out according to Iranian human rights organizations. So based on the past, outcomes of these kinds of things, we can imagine that that is just a very, very low estimate of the amount of casualties. The protests are the biggest demonstrations since 2022 and the reasons this time seem to be economic, to some degrees, linked to high prices and inflation, which is fueling already existing anti government sentiments.

Janet: 01:59  So you mentioned 2022 there. So what’s also in my mind, and what we’re going to be speaking about, mainly, is what are known as The ‘Women, Life, Freedom’, 2022 demonstrations. I’m sorry to press you again, Steph, but I could see that you’ve done your blurb. So off you go.

Stephanie: 02:16  Yeah, those were different demonstrations. Those were widespread protests demanding fundamental rights, sparked by Masha Amini’s death in 2022 after she was detained by the morality police for allegedly having an improper hijab or not covering her hair sufficiently, and that symbolized a kind of broader resistance against compulsory dress codes, gender discrimination and government oppression, which led to arrests and violence and ongoing calls for systemic change for women’s autonomy and personal freedoms, and also just a general end to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s restrictions on those freedoms.

Janet: 02:57  So joining us is Gissou Nia, who’s a human rights lawyer. She’s the founder and director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council. Hi, Gissou.

Gissou Nia:  Hi, thanks for having me on. 

Janet:  Gissou has been on once before. We’ll put a link in, also in the show notes, to a previous pod that she was on. And the reason why we were in contact, Gissou, is because you’re part of the group behind the filing of the first criminal complaint connected to Women, Life, Freedom. So we’re going to give you all the opportunity now to run through it, but we’re just going to pepper you with questions as, as you tell us about it. Let’s start with who is the complaint actually against?

Criminal Complaint Targeting Iranian Officials for Crimes Against Humanity During the “Women, Life, Freedom” Movement

Gissou Nia: 03:41  So the complaint is against more than 40 Islamic Republic of Iran officials who are senior level people in the police, in the military, in the intelligence in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, what’s known as the IRGC, and also some of these individuals who are in the provinces that our complainants were attacked in or detained in. So that’s who it’s against. But one interesting thing I should say is that when we were compiling the list, we had, we have been working on this for a year and a half before we submitted in the middle of December, and we had compiled that alleged perpetrator list, you know, a year earlier, and had worked on it continuously through then and amended it, but we hadn’t looked at the list for maybe a six month period because, you know, we had gotten the facts, and we had put the list together, and we discovered that 1/3 of the perpetrator list had actually been killed in the 12 day war with Israel, between Israel and Iran. And I have to say, this was one of the first times that I’ve been working on litigation where 1/3 of the perpetrator list was killed. Obviously, when you’re dealing with conflict situations Ukraine or so on, you can sometimes see that, but it was, we were pretty taken aback that 1/3 of the list was killed and and I can’t say that the survivors were unhappy about that. I think they were actually quite thrilled, to be fully honest. But it was, it was, it was a moment of surprise.

Stephanie: 05:14  Yeah, I can imagine, if you work so long towards accountability in a very specific forum, then, on the one hand, yeah, this is not, maybe not a sad day that they’re not there anymore. But still, it says something about the problems with getting this case. But will you talk about ‘we’ when filing the case? So who is exactly behind it? You are obviously in your organization, other organizations, individuals. Tell us a bit about the landscape of who is fueling this?

Gissou Nia: 05:41  Yeah, so the Atlantic Council Strategic Litigation Project, our team that I run, helped put this together and in a group called the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, which is a civil society organization that has been working on Iran human rights issues for more than 20 years, is the filing organization alongside a group of complainants, because Argentina, of course, allows for victims to make criminal submissions, which is really key, because this is a victim motivated complaint. We have been struggling to encourage jurisdictions around the world that have universal jurisdiction frameworks and can bring cases of crimes against humanity, allegations against Islamic Republic of Iran perpetrators. We’ve really been struggling to encourage them to do so, mostly for political reasons, I would say a lot of lack of political will. So Argentina is significant because the system allows survivors of these violations to really take that step towards justice in their own hands. So it is a group of complainants, all women, some of whom were subject to targeted blinding, some of whom were shot with live ammunition, one of whom lost her 62 year old mother, who had joined the protest just to demand a better future for her daughters, and was struck with hundreds of metal pellets. But these victims came together and decided that they were wanting to take a step forward for justice. So this is the first criminal complaint brought by survivors to address the issues of the violence of the regime against the Women, Life, Freedom movement. So it’s Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a group of survivors and the Atlantic Council Strategic Litigation Project, assisting, along with a lawyer in Argentina, Máximo Castex, who might be known to viewers because he’s on other universal jurisdiction cases in Argentina.

The Crimes Against Humanity Perpetrated

Janet: 07:44  That’s one of the first times I’ve ever come across targeted blinding as a specific in a case. So I was wondering if you could help us through some of the legal bits and pieces. I mean, it’s basically crimes against humanity, but which bits and how does that fit together with the kind of the broader picture on Iran? 

Gissou Nia: 08:06  Yeah, so the complaint says that Islamic Republic of Iran officials and security forces are responsible for the crimes against humanity of gender persecution, murder, torture and other inhumane acts, and the other inhumane acts category includes targeted blinding. So unfortunately, a pattern that we saw in the Women, Life, Freedom protests is accounts of survivors saying that security forces shot them at close range in an eye with a paintball gun or with metal pellets. So obviously, that form of projectiles is not meant to be used at close range. They can sometimes provide a crowd control function depending on the usage, but they’re clearly not intended for close range use and clearly not intended to be shot in someone’s eye. So you have these very I would say, gripping photos of these brave protesters who, even after they were shot, I mean, one of our complainants, Mersedeh Shahinkar, she was shot in her eye. And even after she was shot in her eye, and went through multiple surgeries to try to address it, she never regained vision, unfortunately, but she would wear an eye patch and go back out into the protests. So you have these very, you know, striking images of women who were simply protesting for their rights now wearing eye patches or having one eye clearly impacted by their peaceful demand for rights. And so that is part of the complaint. We will let the judge conclude whether or not it was targeted, but we’ve laid out all the accounts and the testimony giving an indication of what circumstances that came under. Another complainant in the case, Kosar Eftekhari said in her testimony that a security force came up to her, was taunting her, and said, “Watch out, otherwise, I’ll shoot you”, smiled and then pointed directly at her eye and shot a paintball gun. So again, the judge will, you know, ultimately if this moves forward, if an investigation is open, this will be for a judge to decide on that. But those are some of the facts that are laid out in the complaint that we submitted.

Stephanie: 10:25  And this blinding, indeed the judge will have to decide if it’s targeted, is kind of the horrific cherry on the cake of the things you’re alleging. These are happening on top of alleged mass arrest, arbitrary detention, custodial torture, and also executions, I believe.

Gissou Nia: 10:44  Yeah, there were multiple executions of protesters who had been arrested during the Women, Life, Freedom Movement. And one thing that I will note is that, so some of the things that are in our complaint are very much around how women that were protesting were targeted with live ammunition. There’s one complainant who was shot all throughout her arm with live ammunition, and she has ceased being able to use that arm. As I noted another complainant had her 62 year old mother killed with hundreds of metal pellets. When we saw the autopsy, because there was basically scans of what was in her body, it was just a body that was riddled with pellets, and so that’s the nature of what we’re dealing with. But there was obviously much more extensive crimes that happened, including sexual violence in detention, including torture in detention. There were 1000s of protesters that were arrested, and I’ll note that that pattern is continuing now. I think one reason, you know, as we record this podcast, we’re coming off of what can really only be described as a massacre that occurred over a two day period on January 8, January 9, when people took to the streets in Iran, yet again, demanding their rights, calling for the regime to be gone, and this time, they were just indiscriminately sprayed with live ammunition. There are videos now coming out. There’s been a complete communications blackout in the country, so we’re on two weeks of a communications blackout as we record this podcast. But the videos that have been smuggled out or gotten out with VPNs or Starlink connections have showed security forces just indiscriminately spraying crowds with live ammunition. So I will say that I think the impunity from what happened during the Women, Life, Freedom movement, the fact that there has been no criminal accountability for any official that killed more than 500 protesters during that round of protests is part of the reason we find ourselves here today with Islamic Republic of Iran officials knowing that there will be no accountability for what they do, and certainly the state isn’t going to be investigating themselves.

Gathering and Documenting Evidence From Iran 

Stephanie: 12:52  You spoke a little bit about what is coming out now with the communications blackout, and we’ll go back to the situation now, because that is also very interesting and also horrific, but it’s difficult to get things out of Iran. So for your case in Argentina, what is the evidence that you had to put there? And you know, you talk about scans, talk us through, do they get kind of smuggled out of the country? Do people have their own scans? How do you get the documentation for your case in Argentina?

Gissou Nia: 13:24  With the case that we put together in Argentina, all the complainants that are part of the case are people who are now outside of Iran, so because of the pressure that they and their families were facing, given the nature of their injuries, given the fact that they’ve all taken very public positions on what happened. So what we had seen is that some protesters who were injured just went back to trying to live a quiet life. But obviously, if you’ve been blinded, for instance, you’re forever marked as somebody that potentially participated in these protests. So it’s not only an injury that is deeply painful and really impacts your quality of life, but it also sort of sort of marks you in a way as somebody who participated in these protests, and so it’s very hard to go back to, you know, having a government job or somehow being in society without getting some some blowback from the state. So all the complainants, also for their security, are people who reside outside of Iran. When they left, some of them managed to take the medical documentation when they had been seen by hospitals or doctors in the country. I’ll also note that some hospitals denied medical care to protesters. So some of our complainants faced a situation in which they weren’t initially given medical care, but then they did receive medical care. Other people that we spoke to who are not complainants in the case, but just to give a sense of how evidence is collected, they are treated by sort of underground medical facilities that have been constructed and that also work with doctors who are outside of Iran, Iranian expat doctors that sort of help with, know how, and trying to address situations as best they can. So some of that is medical documentation that has been taken out of the country. Some of that is the medical documentation that they have from being seen by doctors outside of Iran. So a blinding victim who is not yet a complainant in our case, but just to give again, a sense of the kind of evidence, who was treated in Italy, part of the projectiles that were in her eye were taken out by doctors in Italy so they could ID, you know, what is the sort of weapons that the Islamic Republic of Iran is using on these protesters and that it’s shooting people in the eye with, and what does that mean about what their intentions are behind such use of weapons. So it’s medical documentation inside the country, medical documentation outside of the country. 

It’s also a lot of video evidence that we use to establish, because we’re alleging crimes against humanity – the widespread and systematic nature of this – and really getting into the contextual elements, I’ll note that there is something called the Iranian Archive that is run by Mnemonic based in Berlin. I’m sure some of the audience knows about the Syrian Archive and the Yemeni Archive and the other archives that Mnemonic puts together. But basically they preserve video evidence that shows violations that the state is committing, and there was a flood of video evidence at the time during Women, Life, Freedom, obviously, with the current protest, there’s a communications blackout, but with Women, Life, Freedom, there was a lot of videos that eventually came out, and we need to be able to preserve that, ensure that the quote, unquote chain of custody is set for admission in accountability proceedings, and so Mnemonic has set up this Iranian Archive that has collected over 2 million pieces of data from from the Women, Life, Freedom protests. They’re currently working on documenting the current protests as well and the violence there. They’ve collected more than 10,000 pieces, and that work is ongoing. But that, that archive helped identify the weapons that were used against civilians, the patterns of blinding, poisoning of school girls, arrests, killings, gender based violence, attacks and attacks on children. So really, a lot of that information helped to do that, and there’s a coalition that assists the Iranian Archives. So in order to do this as a sort of a massive job, obviously, and we needed to quickly scale it, so our strategic litigation project worked with the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, worked with UCLA’s Promise Institute, Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps, and some other Iran human rights groups, we all work together to collect and preserve these photos and videos and testimony, and that coalition has issued four major reports, and that includes crimes against humanity against children, the targeted blinding of protesters. There’s also reports looking at gender persecution against protesters and the use of chemical weapons against civilians. That’s been a helpful piece. 

I’ll note one other very helpful piece, which is that the UN Human Rights Council had set up a UN fact-finding mission on Iran that was set up in a special session in November 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom Protest. I’ll note that as we’re recording this podcast, there’s yet another special session on Iran with a resolution to extend the mandate of that fact-finding mission on Iran for another two years because of what is currently happening. So I guess we’ll have the news on that in a bit. But that fact-finding mission has also done incredible work. They have a confidential list of alleged perpetrators of that violence, they have over 38,000 verified pieces of evidence, they have testimony from more than 300 victims and witnesses, and that is information that can be shared once national investigations are open. So in fact, in Argentina, there is an investigation into crimes against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and the Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar is actually assisting the Argentine authorities in that investigation. And so we’re hoping that now, with a potential two year extension of the mandate of the UN fact-finding mission on Iran, if an investigation is actually opened into the complaint that we’ve submitted in Argentina, that the FFMI can work closely with the Argentine authorities to help them on what will be a complicated investigation when it’s on the other side of the world. So we’re really hoping that that can aid them in the investigation.

Bringing a Crimes Against Humanity Case before an Argentine Court 

Janet: 19:31  I’m doing a bit of a deep dive into Argentina this month, and I wanted to ask you specifically about the element that you described. You said crimes against humanity, and you said, you know the contextual elements from, from video, but what do you know about how Argentina deals with crimes against humanity? Did you have to kind of pick a bit of this and a bit of that? And you know, you’ve mentioned gender persecution, and I thought, well, I thought that would be absolutely central to what you were alleging, but we’ve spent a lot of time describing actual sort of injuries to people, so just try and talk me through what your idea was about, how Argentina sort of is going to look at what you have put forward in terms of crimes against humanity.

Gissou Nia: 20:17  Well, we know that gender persecution has been seldom litigated, even in international courts, but certainly at the national level. I believe that there’s some jurisprudence around cases involving the Yazidis in Germany, but it’s very far and few in between. So actually, one of, I think the most compelling parts of this complaint is that we are alleging gender persecution as a crime against humanity. And of course, given the political context in Argentina at the moment, a bit of maybe resistance to the word gender, I will say that there’s obviously a broader raft of crimes that we’re bringing forward and crimes against humanity. But obviously, I think one key thing is that we brought on not only Màximo Castex, but also some litigators who are from the region, who litigate in different courts in Latin America, to really make sure that what we submitted, first of all, it’s in Spanish. So we did not do something where we drafted in English and then translated. We drafted it from scratch in Spanish with the litigators that we were working with, and they also had to adjust this to the needs of a criminal complaint. You know, this is not a human rights report. This is actually a criminal complaint that has to really meet all the elements as defined under Argentina’s laws. And so we were lucky in that we were working with a great team who really understood what is a judge, who is a criminal judge, but does not always work on crimes against humanity, and who has a docket that includes a lot of other kinds of crimes that are just prosecuted at national level. You know what is going to speak to that judge in terms of the evidence that will be convincing? How are certain things phrased? So I won’t get too much into the details, because the complaint is obviously not public.

Janet: 22:06  That’s exactly what I was wondering. I mean, how do you make it work for Argentina? Because, you know, they have their own way of doing things.

Gissou Nia: 22:14  Absolutely, and so we were, I think one way that at least our strategic litigation project works is that, you know, we don’t come in as international human rights lawyers into domestic situations and think that we’re just going to apply the way that we maybe would do it, you know, at the Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, you know, you have to really understand the domestic frame. And so we’ll always work with local lawyers in a very concentrated way, make sure that we actually draft the initial complaint, at least in the language of that jurisdiction, and not do a sort of translation thing, and just be very cognizant that the elements of criminal allegations are not, it’s not a human rights report. So I think one thing that you know folks struggle with sometimes is laying out all the facts in a way that reads much more like a human rights report, and it’s like, no, you have to actually make a case to a criminal judge who has a busy docket and who does not exclusively work on international crimes. So yes, that, that is the frame.

Stephanie: 23:11  It kind of echoes back. We’ve been reading Philippe Sand’s book on Pinochet, and there in the beginning, there is a story where they have asked for this extradition of Pinochet, and they put this to an on call magistrate who then, you know, there’s allegations of torture and crimes against humanity, but also murder. And he is more used to seeing murder in his court, so he picks murder as the most important and writes something for that. And then that, then, you know, that’s not an extraditable offense, because it’s not an international crime, so they have to fix it. But I understand what you’re saying when you have to kind of tailor it to the judge who is going to see that and not try to do all the lofty Human Rights Reports. I wanted to kind of pivot back to the situation currently. You said that there are also from the current protest videos coming in or evidence coming in, but we know that there is a communications blackout. So who is gathering evidence and what can we see on that evidence?  

The Current Evidence from Iran 

Gissou Nia: 24:14  At the time that we’re recording this podcast, the communications blackout has gone on for two weeks. Net blocks, which is a group, a sort of watchdog internet shutdown group. It has really been tracking what the level of connectivity is. At the moment, it’s around 2%. Now, people who are savvy technically in the country, and there are plenty of those people, because Iranians have had to face a filtered internet for decades. The Islamic Republic blocks their access to a lot of sites. So Iranians are really savvy with VPNs, in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily see in the US or Europe, though, I think obviously people are getting an appreciation for that in the current environment. And so if you can play around with VPNs, apparently now you are able to, in some limited instances, be able to briefly connect to be able to send videos to the outside. You all also have a situation where people are going to the border. So of course, the services are cut off in Iran. But if you go to the Iraq border, for instance, and you can connect into the cell networks there. So we have a situation where people will travel to the border to be able to send information. There are also Starlink terminals in the country. Now that’s become a bit of a bit of an issue, because now the authorities, the Iranian authorities, are looking for whoever has a Starlink connection, confiscating it and subjecting those people to very harsh penalties, and imprisoning them, actually, but you’ll have like, groups of people who are congregated around the Starlink getting information out. There is also some resumption of land lines. So for example, I’ve been able to connect with people in my family via landlines very briefly. Those are controlled lines, so you won’t be able to have a candid conversation. And by controlled, I mean they’re surveilled by the state, and so you wouldn’t be free to really explain what’s happening.

But just anecdotally, I’ll tell you that what we’re hearing so far is nothing short of horrific. It is, without question, the worst massacre in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The only thing that would even rival it would be the massacre of political prisoners in 1988 in the country, which actually led to the first ever universal jurisdiction case on Iran. That was in Sweden that I actually had been on your podcast before to discuss. That was an estimated 5000 political prisoners who were massacred in the space of a few months in 1988. This is, a government official has said it’s 5000 people. Typically, when a government official says that the number ultimately ends up being double or triple that we’re getting different indications that the number could be 12,000 it could be higher. So we’re talking double digit 1000s, most likely, and that was in the space of two to three days. So if you really do the math, the scale like the speed of that is comparable to the Rwandan genocide, for instance, at just the rate per day. And it’s quite horrific. So we’re getting different images from doctors in the country as well. They’re sending it to doctors on the outside. I’ll just go into one scan that’s, that was pretty horrific that we just saw, which was a skull, multiple like, you know, you can’t even count the number of metal pellets that are in the skull. And then there’s two sets of teeth, so it’s mixed dentation as they just as they say that. And so that means that the age of that person was somewhere from 8 to 10 years old. And so the violence is also against minors, and it’s not surprising because of some of the verified videos. So BBC verify is doing a great job of verifying videos to make sure that they’re authentic, that they’re from these protests, that they are what they say they are, especially in an age of artificial intelligence, we have to be very cautious and careful about that. But different groups are doing that work, and what these groups have verified in verified videos are just security forces, whether it’s anti riot police or there’s reports about militias being brought in from Iraq, militias that the Islamic Republic of Iran supports, but being brought in for Iraq to do this, CNN reported on that, for instance. It’s just showing video of peace security forces just indiscriminately spraying crowds with bullets and walking around and just hunting. And then you see protesters bleeding, and they’re just being dragged or somebody is carrying them because they have a limp leg that was shot up, and the streets are covered in blood, so very grotesque, gruesome stuff. And this is just a trickle of what we will most likely see, because most Iranians have a phone and probably were recording. And I expect that once the internet comes back on, because it will have to, at some point, if for nothing, for economic reasons, because you cannot keep your internet shut down forever, it obviously impacts the economy in a pretty drastic way. I believe that we’ll be getting, you know, hundreds and hundreds of this videos showing the scale of the violence. And it’ll be imperative for groups like the Iranian Archive to really be able to scrape all that before it disappears, and to be able to preserve and verify that in the right way.

Paving New Universal Jurisdiction Opportunities 

Janet: 29:15  Can you foresee in a few years time, what you’re doing now on Women, Life, Freedom, doing the same. I mean, you know, I mean, I’m assuming that the Iranian regime is not going to fall, but so who knows? But let’s say it doesn’t, then will you be looking again for a universal jurisdiction opportunity? Do you imagine? 

Gissou Nia: 29:38  What we’re already looking at is, will there be the potential to actually amend the complaint that we’ve submitted, or to submit another complaint that would be connected. Because, as we view this, these are inextricably linked. The reason that the security forces feel emboldened to commit such a scale of violence is because they face no real penalties for what happened in 2022. Back then, more than 500 protesters were killed, 1000s and 1000s were arrested and treated terribly, but many, many more were injured. But there was no real accountability for that, and there’s a lot that governments can do. So in Argentina, of course, you know, the survivors actually took matters into their own hands and moved this forward, because they have the ability to do that. But the UN has laid out a roadmap. I mean, the fact-finding mission on Iran in their March 2024 report and in the conference paper that accompanied it is calling on jurisdictions to bring these cases. They have compiled this confidential list of alleged perpetrators. And this isn’t theoretical. I mean, there’s concrete steps that governments can take. There are countries with large populations of Iranian survivors of Women, Life, Freedom. So for example, in Germany, there’s a massive population. Individuals have also gone to France and Canada. Those, Germany, France and Canada are all well placed to open structural investigations, and that is where you don’t need a named perpetrator, but it would be a framework in which you could collect information and evidence. So they’re able to open structural investigations. They haven’t yet. There was a request from ECCHR in Berlin to the German authorities to open up a structural investigation into crimes against humanity during the Women, Life, Freedom Movement. The German authorities did not do so. And so I think we need to revisit that. There are also countries like Sweden and Belgium, which have already pursued different cases involving Iran and Sweden. It was a universal jurisdiction case in Belgium, it was looking into, actually a case involving terrorism charges, so a bit different, but they can open investigations and work together, potentially through a joint investigation team. We’ve previously briefed Eurojust on the possibilities when it comes to accountability for Iran. But I think this is really something where the FFMI has urged states to do this. 

We see that the cycles of impunity and violence are not stopping, and so there really needs to be some political will from countries to do what they can. There are 10, at this point, I don’t know if, then, if some of them have actually been made to leave the country, but at one point, there were 10 senior level Islamic Republic of Iran officials just present in Canada. One of them was actually the deputy Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior is often responsible for ordering violence against protests, and he had been in that position in November 2019, when there was yet another set of nationwide protests that resulted in, you know, some reports say 1500, I think Reuters actually said 1500 protesters were killed in those protests. And Canada, instead of opening up a universal jurisdiction case, or, you know, they have the ability to open structural investigations and look at things. They simply subjected these individuals to admissibility proceedings with the point of deporting them. But when you deport them back to Iran, you don’t address the problem. You do not bring justice for victims. And I think it’s, it’s time that the international community really look at what are the options to actually stop the cycle of what’s happening here.

Asymmetrical Haircuts Questions

Stephanie: 33:25  Thank you so much for laying out all the different kind of ways that there is maybe possibility for accountability in Iran, but also sharing a quite you know, startling insight into how much impunity there actually is in Iran, and this must be a difficult time also to be working on this, especially if you still have family in the country. So thank you so much for taking the time to explain this to us. While you probably have 100,000 other things you could be doing. 

We always end our podcast with what we like to call the Asymmetrical Haircuts questions, and I am introducing a new one. What is your first job, or a kind of remarkable job that you’ve held that may be connected to what you do now, or could be something completely different?

Gissou Nia: 34:14  My first internship was at a group called Stop Prisoner Rape, which is quite a strong name. They had since rebranded as Just Detention International, maybe, you know, to help with fundraising or communications, I’m not really sure, but that was dealing with prisoners who had been subjected to sexual abuse and sexual assault in custody. And, yeah, custodial abuse. And so it was addressing prisoners in the United States. And I think there was a lot of people in the general public who just simply wouldn’t have compassion for this, this group of persons. And I think that really helped shore up my bones for, for the kind of work that I eventually what was doing, which is that, you know every, everybody deserves basic human rights. It really doesn’t matter what’s happened to you, what your current status is. Like everybody deserves that basic dignity, and that job involves speaking to a lot of prisoners. I should note, I had no training, so that’s a bit of a concerning point for me, and I think, you know, probably a good note for groups moving forward to train your interns if they are going to be undertaking that kind of very, very delicate and potentially traumatizing work, but I spoke to dozens of prisoners at the time about their experiences, and I think it set me up to be collecting testimonial evidence from survivors, and really maybe built my empathy bone for a group that really wasn’t viewed favorably by a lot of people in the general public. So that was, that was my first internship.

Janet: 35:47  And our final question is always, is there anything you’d like to recommend to people? Steph had already mentioned that our book last month on the Patreon was the 38 Londres Street, the Philippe Sands book. But what are you reading at the moment, Gissou, or what are you watching, or what are you listening to? Do you have any time to do any of that while you’re chasing down your family and videos and filing cases?

Gissou Nia: 36:12  I’ll be honest, it hasn’t been, there hasn’t been a lot of time for free time these days, especially because the project that I run, also works on Venezuela. And so, you know, it’s been quite a 2026, already, I would say. But one book actually that I resurfaced, and it was because of different questions. I mean, people are really grappling with, this gets into heavy issue, but people are using the hashtag R2P when it comes to Iran, which, you know, I hadn’t heard that term for quite a while, I have to say.

Janet: 36:47  Let’s just elucidate what it is for people: Responsibility To Protect –  the idea that states could actually intervene on a humanitarian basis and save a population, and that not be against the UN Charter, which says that you shouldn’t be doing this kind kind of stuff, maybe or maybe not. But yeah, it felt like it was an idea of its time, about 10 years ago, roughly, people are thinking about it again in the context of Iran and maybe Venezuela.

Gissou Nia: 37:15  Yeah. I mean, you know, honestly, with the, with the situation of Libya, and then the failure of the UN Security Council to act on on Syria. I just think I had just not heard the term for quite some time, but it did lead me to dust off my copy of ‘A Problem from Hell’, because I wanted to explain to people the origins of how the Responsibility To Protect doctrine came about. So I can’t say that I’m rereading the book, but in terms of my interactions with any book other than having to do with, you know, looking at the current situation at the moment, that’s the only other book I’ve touched in a few weeks, but it was really with that purpose of educating a younger generation, because when I was a baby lawyer, that obviously, was the book that was on so many of our bookshelves, and that really, you know, a controversial book in many ways, and also with you know how, how that eventually developed, and things that happened. But I wanted to explain the origin story to younger lawyers and people that were aspiring to go to law school and who don’t, who are not familiar with the term R2P, and what that means. So that would be the book that I dusted off.

Janet: 38:18  Certainly sparking for me the idea that maybe we should think about podcasting Steph, too. 

Stephanie:  We’ve done it. 

Janet: Did we do specifically R2P?

Stephanie: 38:27  No, we did the Problem from Hell.

Janet: 38:29  Oh yeah, well, we’ve dissed that on the, on the, on the, on the Patreon podcast. I mean, we all appreciated it very much, but it was but, yeah, there’s lots of buts, I think I would say…

Stephanie: … yeah, true, 

Janet: But yeah. I think R2P is just yeah, it’s fascinating, and I,

Stephanie: 38:49  it’s true, put it on the, put it on the master schedule.

Janet: 38:53  Okay, will do and we’ll see. But Gissou, thank you so much for making time in your very busy schedule to chat to us, and we are following this up with another couple of Argentina podcasts to really try to explore what is going on with so many people turning to this very survivor-led process that appears to come out of Buenos Aires. And it’s fascinating to me that maybe we will see some, some movement on Iran via Argentina. So thank you. 

Gissou Nia: 39:28  Thank you for having me on.

[OUTRO MUSIC]This was asymmetrical haircuts, your international justice podcast, created and presented by Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg. This episode was created in partnership with Justiceinfo.net,  an independent site covering justice efforts for mass violence, and with the Hague Humanity Hub. You can find show notes and everything about the podcast on asymmetricalhaircuts.com. This show is available on every major podcast service, so please subscribe, give us a rating and spread the word.