Thirty
years ago in the summer of 1988 Iranian regime under Khomeini committed a crime
unprecedented since Second World War. In a few months 30000 political prisoners
were executed in Iran. The prisoners were severing their sentences. The order
was to exterminate all prisoners still believing in the People’s Mojahedin
Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The majority of prisoners were members and
supporters of the MEK. The regime saw the MEK as its main rival and enemy.
A four
members “Death Commission,” as it is famous among Iranian political prisoners
oversaw the massacre of
30000 political prisoners in 1988.
Ebrahim
Raisi and Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi — Justice Minister in Hassan Rouhani’s first
cabinet — were two of the four members of the Death Commission who were tasked
by then Supreme Leader Khomeini to immediately execute political
prisoners. Raisi was a low level cleric at the time and in return
for his services was elevated in the rank and files of the mullahs’ hierarchy. Raisi
is a close confidant of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Currently Raisi is the
custodian of Astan Quds Razavi, the wealthiest charity foundation in charge of
Iran’s holiest shrine in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, with close ties to
Khamenei’s powerhouse. He ran for presidential office last year and lost to
Rouhani.
Khomeini’s
fatwa
Khomeini
hand wrote a fatwa, a religious decree, authorizing the Commission’s task. In
the summer of 1988, the Commission handed down 30,000 death sentences. The
kangaroo courts hardly lasted more than three minutes on average. Some of the
political prisoners who miraculously survived the slaughter have written or
spoken of their ordeals. A simple question was asked by the judges: Do you
still believe in Mojahedin? And depending on the answer, one could end up
before a hangman. The gruesome accounts of survivors, especially female
prisoners, often leave the listeners in shock.
Moving
evidence
An audio
tape was leaked out by Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri’s son in August 2016.
Montazeri, the handpicked successor of Khomeini, was sacked for his public
objections to mass executions in 1988. He spent the rest of his life under
house arrest and died in 2009.
In the
moving tape,
Montazeri can be heard telling a meeting of the “Death Commission” in 1988 that
they are responsible for a crime against humanity. He said: “The greatest crime
committed during the reign of the Islamic Republic, for which history will
condemn us, has been committed by you. Your names will in the future be etched
in the annals of history as criminals.” Pour-Mohammadi has since admitted his
role in the “Death Commission” and boasted that he was proud to “carry out
God’s will and he has not lost sleep over what he did.”
In another
part of the tape, Montazeri says that exterminating MEK members had become an
obsession of Ahmad Khomeini’s long before the 1988 massacre. Montazeri in his
tap quotes Ahmad as saying “All of them must be killed even a distant
sympathizer who just reads their paper.” Considering Ahmad’s position as
Khomeini’s right had man wiping out MEK members had been a strategic plan for
the regime.
Rouhani’s
new Justice Minister is also a member of the Death Commission
Alireza
Avaie was appointed Justice Minister in Rouhai’s second cabinet. He is as
guilty as his predecessor. Avaie’s personal record in participating in human
rights violations goes a long way back when he was partner in crime with the
likes of Raisi. He was also a member of Death Commission in southwestern Iran.
The
National Council of Resistance (NCRI) set into motion a galvanized campaign to
call for justice for 1988 massacre in 2016. Tahar Boumedra a former
UN Human Rights official and legal expert took the lead on behalf of families
of 1988 political massacre.
A
psychological torture
The Iranian
regime’s cruelty goes far beyond the victims and it hits immediate family
members and even distant relatives.
Iranian
regime for years tried unsuccessfully to put a lid on its heinous crime.
Families of the victims are still in dark as to what really happen to their
children on that fateful summer. Some are searching for signs of their loved
ones and often traveled in far corners of the country hopping for a single
clue.
Getting rid
of any evidence that might implicate the perpetrators of the crime has been a
strict policy of the regime. The bodies of the executed prisoners were not
allowed to be buried in public cemeteries. They were buried in mass graves
usually far from the cities hoping that the families would not find them.
Razing the unmarked mass graves according to the Amnesty International is tantamount
to psychological torture for the families of the victims. One can
image a mother, wife or sister that gotten use to weekly visits of an unmarked
grave site which she is not even sure that it is his son, husband or brother
and one day finds out a highway soon will be built on top of it. In the case
of grave
site in Ahwaz that is what happed.
On
September 26th 2017, The former UN Special Rapporteur on the human
rights situation in Iran Asma Jahangir ,refers to widespread executions inside
the Iranian regime prisons in 1988, reminding, “The family of those who were
executed have the right to know and be informed on what happened in 1988”.
In the
meantime, Jahangir urged “the regime to establish an independent truth finding
committee to investigate the 1988 massacre of prisoners who were doing their
terms behind bars.”
The Iranian
regime and its leaders should not be allowed to escape the consequences of
their crimes against humanity. Bringing them to justice will set an example
that the world is watching. An independent international commission
investigating the crimes of 1988 in Iran is the first positive step.
