Activists urge RCMP to solicit evidence of Canadians involved in Iran atrocities

Protesters march in support of regime change in Iran during a demonstration in Toronto, on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

OTTAWA — As mass protests in Iran raise hopes that the regime in Tehran might soon topple, human rights activists are calling on the RCMP to collect reports on possible major crimes committed there by Canadians as part of the Iranian government’s violent response to the uprising.

The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights says it wants a “structural investigation,” which would see the RCMP assemble evidence of Canadian residents taking part in war crimes or atrocities, or of being victims of them, to prepare for future prosecutions.

“Announcing the opening of an investigation would send a message of solidarity to victims, accountability to violators, and assert the value of Canadian citizenship,” the group’s policy head Brandon Silver told a Monday press conference on Parliament Hill.

“It would protect our sovereignty by establishing consequences for murdering Canadians, and demonstrating that their murderers are not welcome on Canadian soil.”

The RCMP and the office of Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Protests erupted in late December as Iranians expressed anger over the rising cost of living and water and electricity shortages. The protests escalated into mass demonstrations calling publicly for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s resignation.

In response to the protests, the regime killed thousands and detained tens of thousands more. As videos showing the brutal repression spread around the world, Iran cut off access to the internet and most foreign phone calls.

Silver’s group said Canada should work with allies which already have listed a branch of Iran’s military -- the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- as a terrorist organization. Silver said this collaboration could lead to prosecuting and deporting people involved in repression in Iran and terror abroad.

He also said Canada needs to sanction Ayatollah Khamenei.

“Canada has an opportunity and a duty to lead on behalf of the victimized Canadians left without justice, on behalf of the brave Iranians on the front lines of the fight for our common humanity, on behalf of our country’s foundational principles of the rule of law and human rights that are under assault,” Silver said.

Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumder told Monday’s press conference Canada should “expand and aggressively enforce targeted sanctions” against Iranian officials committing violence and their relatives, freeze the assets of those involved and put those committing foreign interference behind bars.

“The people of Iran … are the embodiment of an ancient light piercing through a 47-year-old tyranny,” he said, referring to the regime that has run Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the country’s monarch.

“Theirs is a story of a people reclaiming their history, their contributions to humanity despite an occupation of a clerical military dictatorship that has repressed them and caused so much grief across the world for so long.”

Majumder said Iran’s regime could soon fall, “a moment perhaps as significant as the Berlin Wall falling itself.”

His comments come as the U.S. positions military assets near Iran, and as U.S. President Donald Trump gives a range of statements about the possibility of American intervention or military action in Iran.

Majumder would not say whether Canada should advise its peer countries on how to proceed if military action ensues. Human rights groups have raised concerns about deadly strikes by Israel last summer on Evin Prison, where Iran holds political prisoners.

Democracy activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam Mackay said there are concerns the regime will try using any foreign strikes or military actions to cover for its own atrocities against civilians.

They were joined at Monday’s media event by Liberal MP Judy Sgro and Sen. Julie Miville-Dechene.

Ottawa cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012 but Canadians of Iranian origin say Iran has continued to send out agents to repress those in the diaspora who challenge the regime by threatening their relatives back home.

In 2022, Ottawa sanctioned senior Iranian military official Morteza Talaei months after he was spotted working out at a gym in Richmond Hill, a suburb near Toronto where many Iranian-Canadians live.

Talaei was Tehran’s police chief in 2003 when Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi was arrested, allegedly for taking photos of a prison. She died in custody 19 days later.

Afshin-Jam Mackay said Iranian authorities’ response to widespread anti-regime protests has shifted from the widespread violence of earlier this month to a quieter form of retribution that involves killing those involved in protests.

“Millions of people were out on the street and they were being gunned down by machine-gun -- now that has stopped. However, now there’s a silent massacre taking place,” she said.

There are reports of prisoners being administered substances upon release and later dying, and authorities checking hospital patients bruises for wounds that indicate they had taken part in protests, Afshin-Jam Mackay said.

“It is still extremely urgent. The massacre continues but in a different way, the way that the Islamic regime always wants, which is in silence away from the eyes of the international community.”

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press