{"id":17841,"date":"2019-04-27T09:05:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T14:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=17841"},"modified":"2019-04-27T09:34:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-27T14:34:21","slug":"time-for-ebrahim-raisi-to-face-justice-for-role-in-1988-massacre-britains-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/17841\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for Ebrahim Raisi to Face Justice for Role in 1988 Massacre &#8211; Britain&#8217;s Express"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;Food deprivation, violent lashings and solitary confinement. These are the harrowing experiences of prisoners serving time in\u00a0Iran\u2019s\u00a0jails (but it could be even worse). In 1988, several thousand people were killed in a series of state sponsored murders, in what critics of the regime claim is Iran\u2019s bloodiest executions on record. Now charities, human rights\u00a0groups and opposition parties fear further atrocities could be committed, following the <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/17698\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">appointment<\/a><em> of \u2018<strong>Ayatollah Death<\/strong>\u2019 who is accused of having a leading role in the murders.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Iran regime&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/17698\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">newly appointed Judiciary Chief<\/a>, Ebrahim Raisi, should face international tribunal for his role in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/11265\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran<\/a>, the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee Member told Britain&#8217;s Express.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview on Thursday, the NCRI&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/news\/world\/1118296\/Iran-news-prison-torture-Ebrahim-Raisi-1988-massacre-Nazanin-Zaghari-Ratcliffe-news\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shahin Gobadi told Express.co.uk<\/a>: \u201cEbrahim Raisi, a member of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/11265\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Death Committee<\/a> in Tehran during the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, who mostly were the activist of the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/pmoi-mek\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">PMOI\/MEK<\/a>), is a devoted supporter of the regime&#8217;s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17860 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D1r2tciU8AAeI32-212x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"212\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D1r2tciU8AAeI32-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/D1r2tciU8AAeI32.jpg 678w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 212px) 100vw, 212px\" \/>\u201cRaisi should be subject to international prosecution for committing crimes against humanity in the massacre of political prisoners in 1988. He should be tried (in international courts) for his role in genocide of MEK members.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/17698\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">appointment<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn addition to committing a major crime in 1988, Raisi is a low ranking cleric without adequate religious credentials. He is under the control of Khamenei and has been serving in the regime&#8217;s repressive agencies since the age of twenty.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRaisi\u2019s appointment proves once again that Khamenei, as the head of the crisis-stricken theocratic regime, finds no solution other than a hard turn towards further repression in order to contain the growing crisis that the regime faces.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKhamenei thus wants to barricade his clerical regime against the uprising of the Iranian people and their organized resistance for justice and freedom in Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>What happened in 1988?<\/strong>\u00a0 \u21d2 (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/11265\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More on 1988 Massacre Here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>On April 25, 2019, Britain&#8217;s Express published an article about the 1988 massacre stating: The 1988 executions that started on July 19, 1988 and lasted for approximately five months, were a series of state-sponsored killings of political prisoners across Iran &#8211; which have now been described as a political purge without precedent.<\/p>\n<p>Amnesty International recorded the names of over 4,482 disappeared prisoners during this time, but other estimates suggest that at least 30,000 prisoners may have perished in one of the biggest cover-ups of all time.<\/p>\n<p>A leaked audio tape, which surfaced in 2016, purportedly highlighted Ebrahim Raisi\u2019s role in the 1988 executions of thousands of political prisoners.<\/p>\n<p>In the recording, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the deputy of Ayatollah Khomeini (the regime&#8217;s supreme leader at the time), is heard <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/11265\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">chastising four officials<\/a> (including Ebrahim Raisi) in charge of the systematic executions, which remain one of Iran\u2019s biggest mysteries following the government attempts to block any investigation into the deaths.<\/p>\n<p>Montazeri is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/11265\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">heard saying<\/a> the executions included \u201cpregnant women and 15-year-old girls,\u201d and were the \u201cbiggest crimes committed by the Islamic Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/11265\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told the Death Committee<\/a>:<em>\u00a0<\/em>\u201c<em>The biggest\u00a0crime in the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us, has been committed by you<\/em>.\u201d Montazeri was subsequently ousted by Khomeini and put under house arrest until his death in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>&#8220;Food deprivation, violent lashings and solitary confinement. These are the harrowing experiences of prisoners serving time in\u00a0Iran\u2019s\u00a0jails (but it could be even worse). In 1988, <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/17841\/\" title=\"Time for Ebrahim Raisi to Face Justice for Role in 1988 Massacre &#8211; Britain&#8217;s Express\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":17844,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,5],"tags":[504,137,549,450],"class_list":["post-17841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-human-rights","category-news","tag-1988massacre","tag-1988-massacre","tag-human-rights-abuses-in-iran","tag-human-rights-violation-in-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17841"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17862,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17841\/revisions\/17862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}