Mass execution of political prisoners in Iran in 1988

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The mass execution of political prisoners in Iran in 1988 ( Persian ۱۳۶۷ اعدام زندانیان سیاسی در تابستان) began on July 29, 1988 during the reign of Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi . The executions stretched over five months. The exact number of those executed is still unknown. What is certain is that several thousand were executed without a judgment.

The majority of those executed were members of the largest opposition party, the People's Mujahedin . However, members of smaller, mainly left-wing opposition groups were also affected. The executions were "an act of violence unprecedented in the history of Iran - unprecedented in the form, intensity and manner in which the executions were carried out".

Khomeini's order to execute the tens of thousands

Number of victims

Various sources put at least 1,367, 2,700 up to speculative 10,000 political prisoners executed in Iran. In 2008, the controversial National Council of Resistance of Iran released a testimony from a former employee of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) saying that 33,700 prisoners had been executed.

Khomeini's execution order

Special precautions were taken to keep the executions secret. To this day, the government of Iran denies that the executions took place at all. Because of the large number of people executed, the executions were reported by surviving prisoners. The reasons why the political prisoners were executed vary. Some arguments speak of an act of revenge for the People's Mujahedin uprising on the western border of Iran, although this uprising did not develop fully until after the executions began.

Shortly before the executions began, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a secret order that special commissions should be set up to crack down on the People's Mujahedin (Mojahedin -e Chalgh ). These are mohareb (enemies of God) and have fallen away from the faith of Islam. Apostasy is punishable by death in Iran .

Excerpts from Khomeini's instructions:

« از آنجا که منافقین خائن به هیچ وجه به اسلام معتقد نبوده و هر چه میگویند از روی حیله و نفاق آنهاست و به اقرار سران آنها از اسلام ارتداد پیدا کرده اند, با توجه به محارب بودن آنها و جنگ کلاسیک آنها در شمال و غرب و جنوب کشور با همکاریهای حزب بعث عراق و نیز جاسوسی آنها برای صدام علیه ملت مسلمان ما و با توجه به ارتباط آنان با استکبار جهانی و ضربات ناجوانمردانه آنان از ابتدای تشکیل نظام جمهوری اسلامی تا کنون, کسانی که در زندانهای سراسر کشور بر سر موضع نفاق خود پافشاری کرده و میکنند ، محارب و محکوم به اعدام میباشند. » (رضایی و سلیمی نمین ، پاسداشت حقیقت: 147) »

“Because the treacherous PMOI members do not believe in Islam, although they claim otherwise, and because of their systematic military warfare on Iran's northern, western and southern borders, their collaboration with the Iraqi Ba'ath Party and their espionage for Saddam Hussein against our Muslim nation, because of its ties to the West and because of the brutal blows against the Islamic Republic from the beginning, all members of the PMOI and those who continue to support the PMOI must be viewed as enemies and therefore executed become."

Selection of prisoners

Scientific research has shown that the plans for the mass execution took place months before the actual executions. According to a report, the political prisoners were selected according to their political grouping and the length of their sentences.

Questioning the prisoners

A special court of 16 members was set up in Tehran, representing the various bodies of the Islamic Republic, such as Supreme Leader Khomeini, the Prime Minister, the Prosecutor General and the prison administration of Evin Prison and Gohar Dascht Prison . Ayatollah Mortasa Eschraqi acted as chairman of the special court with the assessors Hodschatoleslam Hoseinali Nayeri and Hodschatoleslam Ali Mobascheri. The special court held its sessions alternately in Evin and Gohar Dascht prison. Comparable special courts are said to have existed in the provinces.

The prisoners were summoned to the special court and questioned without knowing the purpose of the questioning. First, the male members of the People's Mujahedin were questioned. Before the interrogation, the prisoners were told that the following interrogation was not a trial, but an interrogation designed to separate Muslim and non-Muslim prisoners.

The first question was: Which political group do you belong to? If the respondents answered with the People's Mujahedin, the survey was already over. Anyone who gave a different or no grouping was asked about their beliefs. If a prisoner stated that he was a monafeghin ( rioter and political activist), he was asked,

  • whether he is ready to betray political activists,
  • whether he is ready to betray political activists in front of the cameras,
  • whether he would be ready to assist in their arrest,
  • whether he was ready to name sympathizers,
  • whether he was ready to identify people who only pretended to be non-political activists,
  • whether he was ready to go to war for Iran and run across minefields.

If one of the questions was answered evasively or with no, the survey was over. Another questionnaire read:

  • Are you Muslim?
  • Do you believe in God?
  • Is the Holy Quran the Word of God?
  • Do you believe in heaven and hell?
  • Do you accept that holy Mohammad is the last of the prophets?
  • Will you publicly renounce historical materialism?
  • Do you fast during Ramadan?
  • Do you pray and read the holy Quran?
  • Would you rather share your cell with a Muslim or a non-Muslim?
  • Will you sign a document that you believe in God, the Prophet, the Holy Quran and the Resurrection?
  • When you were a child, did your father pray, fast, and read the Holy Quran?

Some prisoners were saved by answering questions about the satisfaction of the special court. One prisoner, who immediately understood the meaning of the questions, began to warn the other prisoners in Morse code after he was returned to his cell. Children of fathers who had not prayed or read the Qur'an could not be called "apostate" because they were never introduced to the faith. Anyone who tried to evade the answers by declaring the belief a private matter was immediately classified as "apostate". Prisoners who had served their sentences were sentenced to death in the same way as prisoners who had many years in prison ahead of them.

Executions

Preparations for the executions began in the morning hours of July 29, 1988. The prison gates were hermetically sealed. Previously planned visits or phone calls were canceled. Visits to the doctor have been canceled and the acceptance of packages for prisoners has ceased. The otherwise competent courts were given leave of absence for the duration of the executions. Family gatherings outside the prisons have been broken up.

Inside the prison, the prisoners were isolated in blocks, and radio and television sets were removed from the cell blocks. All facilities that prisoners could otherwise visit, such as the pharmacy, workshops, reading rooms, etc., were closed. The guards were ordered to stop talking to the prisoners.

After the questioning, the prisoners were told that they should write their will and hand over their valuables (ring, watch, glasses). The prisoners were then blindfolded and led to the gallows , with six people each being hanged from a gallows. The hanging was done by pulling the rope around the neck to suffocate the prisoners. Death occurred after several minutes. In individual cases it took up to 15 minutes for the executed person to die.

After a few days, the exhausted executioners demanded that firing squads should be used for the execution. This demand was rejected by the special court, since according to Sharia “enemies of God” and “apostates” had to be hanged. The real reason, however, was rather that shootings would have been noisier and could therefore have been more concealed.

At the beginning of the wave of executions, the real intentions of the special court could be concealed from the prisoners. One of the survivors was of the opinion that the questioning would serve his imminent release on the occasion of the upcoming peace celebrations.

responsible

The alleged perpetrators include some Iranian politicians who are still prominent today:

  • Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi , deputy secret service minister at the time, information / secret service minister in Mohammad Chātami 's first cabinet from 1990 to 1990 , later interior minister under Mahmud Ahmadinejad and from 2013 to 2017 justice minister under Hassan Rouhani . Pour-Mohammadi was named by the then designated successor Chomeinis Hossein Ali Montazeri as a central figure in the mass executions, for which Montazeri fell into sensational disfavor with Khomeini and was not his successor. Khomeini's successor Ali Khamenei kept the popular Grand Ayatollah Montazeri under house arrest until his death. Tape recordings of the late Grand Ayatollah, in which he accused Pour-Mohammadi and Ali Khamenei before his death, play an important role in Iranian domestic politics to this day.

Whether those responsible for the alleged crimes of 1988 are held accountable depends not only on national prosecution in Iran but also on the so-called world law principle , a universal principle of international criminal law according to which acts are prosecuted even if they have no relation to a nation state have, so they can (can) be pursued in other countries.

Treatment of women

Women who were members of the People's Mujahideen were hanged like men as "enemies of God". Punishment was easier for women who were accused of "apostasy" than for men. In the opinion of the special court, women were not fully responsible for their actions on the basis of Islamic law. For this reason, women members of left groups were given the opportunity to reconsider their behavior. For each of the five prayers they had to offer each day, they received five lashes if they were "supposed to forget" them. The punishments had an effect. Many began to pray. A woman who refused to pray died after 22 days and 550 lashes.

The bereaved

According to Schirin Ebadi , the relatives of the prisoners were told that they would not be allowed to hold a funeral or mourning ceremony with public participation for a year. If the survivors' behavior was to the satisfaction of the judicial authorities, they would be informed of the place where the body of the executed person was buried. The bereaved were told that the family member's name had appeared on PMOI lists linked to the insurgents in western Iran.

Reactions

Upon learning of the executions, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri wrote two letters to Khomeini and one letter to the special court criticizing the executions. Montazeri, who had been appointed Khomeini's designated successor in 1985, was subsequently removed from this post and later placed under house arrest.

Amnesty International published a report on the mass executions in 1990. Human Rights Watch also addressed the mass execution in a report published in 1990.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Iranian party demands end to repression . In: People's World . September 10, 2004 ( peoplesworld.org [accessed October 5, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Ervand Abrahamian: Tortured Confessions , University of California Press, 1999, pp. 209-228
  3. ↑ a b c d Ervand Abrahamian: Tortured Confessions , University of California Press, 1999, p. 210
  4. ↑ http://www.holycrime.com/Images/Listof1367Massacre.pdf
  5. ^ Amnesty International. 1988 Annual Report, page 472 and 1989, page 518
  6. ↑ Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah by Baqer Moin , p. 278
  7. ↑ [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / ncr-iran.org
  8. ↑ List of the Fedayeen executed in 1988 (PDF; 279 kB).
  9. ↑ a b Ervand Abrahamian: Tortured Confessions . University of California Press, 1999, p. 218.
  10. ↑ Pasdasht e Haghighat by Mohsen Rezaee and Abbas Salimi-Namin. P. 147. 2002
  11. ↑ Kaveh Sharooz: With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor. A Preliminary Report on the 1988 Massacre of Iran's Political Prisoners. In: Harvard Human Rights Journal. Vol. 20, p. 233.
  12. ^ The Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran, 1988. Report of an Inquiry Conducted by Geoffrey Robertson. May 2010, p. 43 ( Memento from July 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ Ervand Abrahamian: Tortured Confessions , University of California Press, 1999, pp 212th
  14. ↑ [Ruhollah Khomeini]: Announcement of the end of the mining of Montazeri by Khomeini , Montazeri was as Grand Ayatollah higher than Khomeini
  15. ↑ The Guardian : Audio file revives calls for inquiry into massacre of Iran political prisoners , August 11, 2016, downloaded September 5, 2017
  16. ^ E. Mahbaz (pseudonym), The Islamic Republic of Iran - The Hell for women: Seven Years in Prison (unpublished paper, 1996), quoted from: Ervand Abrahamian: Tortured Confessions , University of California Press, 1999, p. 215.
  17. ↑ Schirin Ebadi, Azadeh Moaveni: Iran Awakening , Random House New York, 2006, pp. 87, 88.
  18. ^ Editor: Montazeri's Letters. In: Cheshmandaz. No. 6 (Summer 1989), pp. 35-37, quoted from: Ervand Abrahamian: Tortured Confessions , University of California Press, 1999, p. 220.
  19. ↑ Katajun Amirpur: Clergy in Iran: "A government that relies on lies" . Spiegel Online, June 24, 2009
  20. ^ Obituary: Hossein Montazeri . Al Jazeera English, December 20, 2009
  21. ↑ Iran: Violations of Human Rights 1987-1990, "Amnesty International, Index: MDE 13/021/1990.
  22. ^ Ministers of Murder: Iran's New Security Cabinet: Pour-Mohammadi and the 1988 Prison Massacres. Retrieved October 5, 2018 .