The families of murdered Iranian nuclear scientists have filed a lawsuit against Israel, the US and the UK, accusing them of involvement in assassination.

Rahim Ahmadi Roshan, whose son, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed in a bomb attack in January, told a press conference in Tehran that the families had asked Iran's judiciary to pursue their complaint through international bodies and bring those behind the killings to justice.

"We've filed an indictment against the Zionist regime and the arrogant powers," Roshan said. The judiciary "is to pursue this case with the relevant international bodies", he added.

Iran's state television broadcast purported confessions this month by 14 suspects in connection with the killing of five nuclear scientists since 2010. The channel showed pictures from a military barracks which it said was a training camp outside Tel Aviv in Israel where the suspects took courses, including on how to place magnetic bombs on cars – the method used in the killing of the scientists.

The suspects also acknowledged in the purported confessions that they received training in Israel.

Iran says the attacks are part of a covert campaign by Israel and the west to sabotage its nuclear programme, which the US and its allies suspect is aimed at producing nuclear weapons. Iran denies that.

Iran has blamed the Mossad as well as the CIA and MI6 for the assassinations, with support from some of Iran's neighbours. . The US and Britain have denied involvement in the killings. Israel has not commented.

Mansoureh Karami, the wife of the murdered Tehran University physics professor, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, said: "Through this complaint, we declare to the world that actions of arrogant governments, led by the US, Britain and the occupying Zionist regime, in assassinating nuclear scientists and elites is against human principles.

"While filing our complaint and announcing our protest, we resolutely declare that not only will such disgraceful acts not prevent the advancement of the children of this land in science, it will cause them to take more effective steps with greater determination," she said.

In May, Iran hanged Majid Jamali Fashi, 24, for the 2010 killing of Ali Mohammadi. Fashi, who said in televised confessions that he had been recruited by the Mossad, was convicted last August.Officials say the campaign against Iran includes the abduction of Iranian scientists, thesale of faulty equipment and the planting of the destructive computer worm Stuxnet, which hampered Iran's uranium enrichment activity in 2010.