Ebrahim Raisi Should Face Justice for Role in 1988 Massacre – Express.co.uk

Written by Staff Writer on 26 April 2019.

The Iranian regime’s new Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi should face international condemnation for his role in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran, Shahin Gobadi of the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee told Britain’s Express.

In an interview on Thursday, Gobadi told Express.co.uk: “Ebrahim Raisi, is a member of the Death Committee in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, overwhelming majority of whom were activist of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK) in 1988, and a devoted supporter of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

“Raisi should be subject to international prosecution for committing crimes against humanity in the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, and tried for genocide of MEK members.

“His appointment as the highest judicial authority of the clerical regime signals a hard turn to even more repression by the clerical regime against the Iranian people and resistance.

“In addition to committing a major crime in the 1988 massacre, Raisi is a low ranking cleric without adequate religious credentials.

“He is under the control of Khamenei and has been serving in the regime’s repressive agencies since the age of twenty.

“Raisi’s appointment by Khamenei proves once again that as the head of the crisis-stricken theocratic regime, he finds no other solution than a hard turn towards further repression in order to contain the growing crisis that the regime faces.

“Khamenei thus wants to barricade his clerical regime against the uprising of the Iranian people and their organized resistance for justice and freedom in Iran.”

What happened in 1988?

An article about the 1988 massacre published on April 25, 2019 by Express.co.uk stated: Starting on July 19, 1988 and lasting for approximately five months, the 1988 executions was a series of state-sponsored killings of political prisoners across Iran – which have now been described as a political purge without precedent.

Amnesty International recorded the names of over 4,482 disappeared prisoners during this time, but other estimates suggest at least 30,000 prisoners may have perished in one of the biggest covers up of all time.

A leaked audio tape, which surfaced in 2016, purportedly highlighted Ebrahim Raisi’s role in the 1988 executions of thousands of political prisoners.

In the recording, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the deputy supreme leader at the time, is heard chastising four officials in charge of the systematic executions, which remain one of Iran’s biggest mysteries following the government attempts to block any investigation into the deaths.

He is heard saying the executions included “pregnant women and 15-year-old girls”, and were the “biggest crimes committed by the Islamic Republic”.

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