End Culture of Impunity

OPINION:

Ebrahim Raisi was a member of the infamous Death Commission in Tehran in 1988. Along with Hossein Ali Nayyeri, the Sharia judge; Morteza Eshraghi, Tehran Prosecutor; Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, Deputy Minister of Intelligence; and several other criminal mullahs such as Ali Mobasheri, Mohammad Moghesiye, Esmail Shushtari, and Ali Razini, Raisi proceeded to direct and supervise the summary execution of thousands of members and supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) in Evin and Gohardasht prisons after two or three minute hearings. According to those who survived the massacre, Raisi actually played the prosecutor’s role.

Altogether 30,000 political prisoners, mostly from the MEK, were massacred in a matter of a few months and buried in unmarked mass graves. No information on the victims, the manner in which they were murdered, or where they were buried has been given to the families of the victims.

In 1982, Raisi was appointed as the prosecutor of Hamedan while retaining his position in Karaj. He served in both positions from 1980 to 1983. In this period, mass executions of opposition groups, especially the MEK, were carried out with Raisi serving a pivotal role in these two provinces to suppress any form of dissent.

Statement by Angès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International

EXCERPTS

“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance, and torture is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran. In 2018, our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the Death Commission which forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity

“It is now more urgent than ever for member states of the UN Human Rights Council to take concrete steps to address the crisis of systematic impunity in Iran including by establishing an impartial mechanism to collect and analyze evidence of the most serious crimes under international law committed in Iran to facilitate fair and independent criminal proceedings.”