Following the destruction of the graves of martyrs from the 1980s, particularly those of the 1988 massacre in Behesht-e Zahra, Khavaran, Tabriz, Ahvaz, Mashhad, and other cities, the religious fascism ruling Iran is now seeking to eliminate the remaining documents, evidence, and sites of the savage executions by demolishing Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, which was one of the primary centers for the 1988 massacre.
State media, including the Alborz network television and the IRGC’s Fars news agency, displayed scenes of the prison’s demolition on September 13, 2026, in the presence of Heydar Asiabi, the head of the Prisons Organization. He stated: ‘Following the strict orders of the head of the judiciary, we were present in Karaj today so that all the surrounding walls of the prison would be demolished. This work has practically begun today, and within less than a month, all the walls will be destroyed to prepare the ground for the implementation of the development plan inside Karaj, whether for residential or commercial use.’ Asiabi, who was appointed as the head of the Prisons Organization last month (August 2026), has previously been involved in crimes while serving as the Prosecutor of Shiraz, Prosecutor of Semnan, Chief Justice of Golestan, and a judge at the so-called revolutionary tribunal in Golestan.
In the 1980s, Gohardasht Prison was one of the most significant centers for the torture of political prisoners, especially the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). During the 1988 massacre, after Evin, the highest number of prisoners in Tehran were hanged in this prison. The corridor and death hall, the site of the Death Commission, the torture chambers, and other details of Gohardasht were announced by the PMOI three decades ago and were documented and recorded with details, sketches, and three-dimensional images by Mojahed witnesses in the trial of the henchman Hamid Noury in 2021 and 2022. These details were also published in the memoirs of a number of massacre witnesses starting in the early 1990s.
In August 2025, on the orders of Ali Khamenei, Plot 41 of Behesht-e Zahra, which contains the graves of thousands of PMOI martyrs executed in 1981, was destroyed and leveled with heavy machinery (Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, August 11, 2025).
The Iranian Resistance warned of the regime’s intent to destroy the graves of the 1988 martyrs in Khavaran in its statement on April 24, 2021. On May 4 of the same year, 1,112 family members of the Mojahed martyrs, in a letter to the UN Secretary-General, leaders of the European Union, and the United States, called for urgent action to prevent the continued destruction of the martyrs’ graves. A statement on June 27, 2017, reported the destruction of the graves of martyrs from the 1980s, particularly those from the year 1988, in Tabriz, Mashhad, and Ahvaz.
Professor Javaid Rehman, the then-UN Special Rapporteur, stated in his report on July 18, 2024, that Iranian authorities have initiated a systematic campaign to destroy the mass graves of thousands of political prisoners executed in 1988. This not only exacerbates the pain and suffering of the victims’ families but also hinders efforts to establish the truth and hold those responsible accountable.
The Iranian Resistance emphasizes that destroying evidence of crimes in genocide and crimes against humanity, and obstructing the discovery of the truth, constitutes the continuation of and complicity in these crimes. It calls upon the United Nations and relevant bodies to take immediate action to prevent the continued destruction of Gohardasht Prison and the graves of the martyrs, and to bring the perpetrators of these savage crimes to justice.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
15 September 2026