In wartime, medical workers stay neutral because they can treat the wounded without being treated as the enemy. The author, founding chief prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, argues Iran’s prosecution of a Red Crescent worker breaks that rule.
Medical personnel are protected persons. That principle — rooted in the Geneva Conventions and universally accepted — is now being tested in Iran with the case of Mozhdeh Hashemi Bazargani, a 27-year-old Red Crescent worker whose death sentence was recently upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court. Her prosecution is not only a human‑rights abuse; it is a violation of the laws of armed conflict.
Under the Geneva Conventions, medical workers are noncombatants. They are permitted to move across the battlefield, treat the wounded, and carry out humanitarian duties without fear of arrest, torture, or prosecution as spies. Their neutrality is essential to preserving life in wartime. Iran’s treatment of Hashemi Bazargani disregards these obligations.
According to her recorded statements from Qazvin prison, security agents apparently raided her home in the middle of the night, cutting through her door with a metal grinder. She was living with her elderly mother. During interrogations, she says she was beaten with pipes and batons until her teeth broke, denied medical care, and forced to sign whatever interrogators placed in front of her. Her “confession,” stitched together from interrogation footage, was broadcast on state television. She was never allowed a lawyer of her choosing, and her trial was closed to public scrutiny.
Iran accuses her of sending the location of a military site to “the enemy,” a charge she denies. Torture, coerced confessions, and secret trials violate both international humanitarian law and international human‑rights law. Iran has a long and sad history of these abuses — decades long.
Her case fits a broader pattern. Iran’s judiciary has issued harsh sentences — including death — against dozens of people this year on vague national‑security charges, many of them arrested after protests. Families consistently report torture-extracted confessions and trials shielded from public view. Tens of thousands of Iranians have been destroyed by their own government.
Targeting medical workers is a red line. It undermines the neutrality of humanitarian work and erodes protections that allow aid workers to operate in conflict zones. If Iran executes a Red Crescent worker on the basis of forced confessions, it signals that no humanitarian actor is safe. Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions — torture, unlawful detention, and the targeting of protected persons — require investigation and accountability. Silence only encourages further violations.
Alas, Iran, absent regime change, will ignore any appropriate efforts.
David M. Crane is a global leader in international criminal justice and the founding Chief Prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone. He has spent decades shaping accountability mechanisms around the world, including serving as a driving architect behind the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. Crane is a distinguished scholar of international law, a former senior U.S. national security official, and a leading voice on the rule of law, state responsibility, and the legal limits on the use of force.
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