EDITORIAL: Settling the score with the MEK
“For the past 40 years, nothing has happened against our regime in which the MEK did not have the leading role.” These are the words of Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, the Iranian regime’s Justice Minister during the first term of so-called moderate president of the mullahs Hassan Rouhani.
In the summer of 1988, Pour-Mohammadi sat on the Tehran Death Commission, which ordered the execution of 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin (PMOI or MEK) during a few weeks based on a fatwa by Khomeini.
Currently advisor to the regime’s Judiciary Chief (Ebrahim Raisi, another member of the Tehran Death Commission), Pour-Mohammadi put aside all political considerations in an interview with Mosalas magazine on July 24, 2019. When asked how they executed political prisoners who were already serving their prison sentences, he responded: “Whoever is in the enemy lines is the enemy. What are we supposed to do to the enemy? We are supposed to fight the enemy.” He threatened the MEK: “We have not yet settled the score with the MEK. We will discuss these matters after we eliminate them.” He elaborated further: “This whole issue is immaterial and does not merit attention. But, I think once, God willing, we get rid of the MEK, these matters will become clearer with greater detail.”
Pour-Mohammadi’s remarks are a confession to a truth that has been covered up for three decades by the mullahs, where they are still refraining from providing details about the 1988 massacre, the names of the victims, their numbers, burial places, etc. On the other hand, they show the level of fear in the regime of the public’s demand for justice over this crime against humanity.
The mass murderer’s remarks raised a wave of international condemnation. Amnesty International said in a statement that Pour-Mohammadi’s shocking remarks are “a stark reminder of the sense of impunity that senior officials linked to the killings enjoy.”
The fact that Pour-Mohammadi and his cohorts have so brazenly tried to justify their crime against humanity is a sign of a futile effort in the face of the public demand for holding accountable authorities of a regime which for four decades has brought nothing other than execution and imprisonment for the Iranian people.
In reality, the ongoing anti-regime protests in Iran alongside the change in international circumstances against the regime and the surge in international support for the Iranian Resistance, plus the spread of the MEK’s activities inside Iran and abroad, including its five-day convention in Ashraf-3, have caused desperation and desertion among the regime’s forces who fear for their future. Pour-Mohammadi also aims to prop them up with such criminal comments.
But, the mullahs can’t set back time, and in their utmost international and regional isolation, they can’t evade certain overthrow.