Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also want to thank the members of the subcommittee.
It's a great pleasure for me to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to join you today.
Exactly seven years ago today, my friend Masih Alinejad testified before this very committee. As an Iranian journalist and one of the leaders of the women's rights movement, she warned of the dangers posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Not long after returning to her home in Brooklyn, Iran tried to kidnap her. The regime hired an operative to abduct her and return her to Iran to face likely execution. What is exceptional about Masih's story is not that Iran ordered her kidnapping; it is that she survived. Most others have not.
We live in what scholars have called the golden age of transnational repression. Since 2014, Freedom House has documented close to 1,400 incidents across 107 countries carried out by 54 governments against their citizens in exile. These numbers continue to rise every year.
Even where direct perpetrators are caught and prosecuted, as Masih's would-be kidnappers were, the statistics still do not go down, because transnational repression is by definition a leadership crime. It is not the spontaneous misconduct of rogue agents. It is the deliberate exercise of state power directed from the top against individuals whose only transgression was to exercise their right to freedom of expression or opinion from the supposed safety of exile.
The operative who attempted to kidnap Masih did not act alone. Behind him was a chain of command, a budget, an intelligence apparatus and, at the top of that chain, a senior official who gave the order. It is that person, the official who authorized the operation, who has never been held to account, and that gap is the topic of my testimony today.
The international community has studied transnational repression extensively, condemned it at the highest levels and built policy frameworks to counter it. The G7, for example, under Canada's presidency, has declared that TNR undermines national security, state sovereignty and the safety of human rights. Forty-five states signed a joint statement at the UN Human Rights Council in 2024 calling for coordinated action against it. This committee has heard powerful testimony about its human cost.
What the international community has not done is hold anyone criminally responsible for ordering it at the highest levels. The focus has been on detection, disruption and diplomatic pressure. Nobody is asking who bears criminal responsibility for directing transnational repression as a matter of state policy. The current responses, therefore, have very real limits.
Criminal prosecutions of operatives matter, but they can cover only those who carry out these crimes, not those who command them from abroad. Targeted sanctions, which have been an important tool that we've been using and should be used even further, still only levy costs without generating criminal accountability. They can be lifted under diplomatic pressure, for example. A senior foreign official who calculates that the worst-case outcome is a travel restriction has been given insufficient reason to stop.
The result is a landscape of responses that generate visibility without accountability and leave the command architecture of TNR entirely intact. The architects of these campaigns have drawn a clear conclusion: The international community will document these crimes, prosecute the low-level operatives and maybe sanction some associates, but it will do nothing to threaten their personal liberty. Until that calculation shifts, TNR will continue being ordered by the commanders and senior officials of foreign regimes.
International criminal law was built precisely to protect individuals from the criminal exercise of state power and to ensure that those at the highest levels who order these atrocities cannot hide behind their office or mandate. The dissident hunted across borders by the state she fled is exactly the kind of victim this framework was designed to protect, because she is someone for whom no other remedy exists.
I am seeking to underscore in my testimony today that the foundation to respond exists through the International Criminal Court and has simply never been used. Under article 12(2)(a) of the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC, the court has jurisdiction where an alleged crime was committed on the territory of a state party. TNR operations produce their effects where the victim is located—on the soil of the host state. If that host state is a Rome Statute party member, the ICC has jurisdiction over those crimes.
Even if the primary perpetrating states are not Rome Statute members—and most of them are not—like Iran, China and Russia, their victims are almost always located in jurisdictions that are members of the court, including Canada.
I will note that Canada led a statement of the G7 condemning Iran regime transnational repression and a further statement of 14 countries condemning the following:
...attempts of Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty. These Services are increasingly collaborating with international criminal organisations to target journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials in Europe and North America.
As you know, the founder of our centre, Professor Irwin Cotler, a former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, was one of these Jewish citizens and former officials targeted for assassination.
The widespread and systematic nature of this transnational repression targeting civilians as a matter of Iran state policy meets the exact legal definition of a crime against humanity.
To conclude, I would urge the subcommittee to consider calling on the Government of Canada to refer Iran's transnational repression to the International Criminal Court. Canada can even lead our allies—the five members of the G7 that are also members of the ICC, and the other 12 signatories of the joint statement on Iranian transnational repression that are also members of the court—in jointly referring the case to the ICC and allocating resources to the court to prioritize it. This would set a major global precedent that would resonate far beyond Iranian transnational repression in order to combat global TNR.
Too many Canadians continue to adjust their routines, triple-check their locks and look over their shoulders because the foreign architects of transnational repression know they are protected by a culture of impunity. This subcommittee can help change that.
Thank you.