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Iran: Top Official Involved in 1988 Genocide Defends It

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On July 10, Hossein Ali Nayeri, one of the key perpetrators of the 1988 massacre, acknowledged the mass killing of over 30,000 political prisoners.

“In such critical circumstances, what were we supposed to do? We had to hand down verdicts decisively. We couldn’t run the country by offering them hugs and kisses,” Nayeri said during his interview with the regime’s Islamic Revolution Document Center (IRDC).

In the summer of 1988, following a fatwa by the regime’s then-supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, tens of thousands of political prisoners were sent to the gallows. Ninety percents were members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

Per Khomeini’s fatwa, “Death Commissions” across the country were formed with the task of liquidating prisoners who refused to surrender to the regime and remained steadfast in their allegiance to the MEK. Nayeri sat with the regime’s current president Ebrahim Raisi on the so-called “Death Commission” in Tehran and was the chief judge.

While acknowledging the 1988 massacre, Nayeri tried to twist the truth, blaming the victims for this crime against humanity.

“The prisoners were not tried for the same case. They staged riots in prisons. They were also organized in prisons and received information from outside. They were conspiring again. They weren’t just serving their sentences; they persisted in their hostility toward the system,” Nayeri blatantly claimed.

As became evident during the trial, the prisoners were not asked about their alleged activities in the prisons. They were only asked one question: “What is your organizational affiliation?” Anyone, male or female, who said they belonged to the MEK was quickly taken away and hanged.

Nayeri’s interview was a litany of lies, but he failed to conceal one fact: The regime extrajudicially massacred tens of thousands of prisoners in a short time only because they did not disavow their ideals.

He is, of course, not the first official to acknowledge the 1988 massacre and defend this heinous crime.

In 2019, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, then-advisor to the Iranian regime’s Judiciary Chief and another member of Tehran’s “Death Commission,” brazenly defended the 1988 massacre and vowed to continue hunting down and eliminating MEK members.

“Look! When you commute a sentence, temporarily, for a criminal terrorist in prison, and then he behaves like he is taking part in the depth of the conspiracy and is cooperating [with the enemy], are you supposed to be dimwitted and simplistic and let him carry out any operation? Who would do that?”

Nayeri’s interview comes days before a court in Stockholm will announce the verdict on the case of Hamid Noury (Abbasi), an Iranian prison official apprehended in 2019 due to his role in the 1988 massacre.

Nayeri’s recent admission debunks Noury’s claims that the 1988 genocide never occurred and was fabricated by the regime’s adversaries, or that those who were hanged had actually been killed at the western border of Iran during the MEK’s four-day Eternal operation in July 1988.

During Noury’s trial, the survivors of the 1988 massacre shared their horrific accounts of what happened in those dark days in Gohardasht prison west of Tehran, where Noury worked as an executioner, and Nayeri and Raisi rapidly sealed the fate of thousands of political prisoners.

As the survivors testified during Noury’s trial, the so-called trials by the “Death Commission” lasted a few minutes, and prisoners were denied lawyers.

“On Friday, July 29, they turned off the TV and banned any open airtime. On July 30, the prison guard entered and called out eight names, including my brother, Reza Zand,” Mohammad Zand, a MEK member who survived the massacre, testified in September 2021, when Noury’s trial location transferred to Albania per prosecutors’ request to hear the testimonies of several MEK members.

“He gave me his ring and prayer beads and told me to keep them to remember him. I declined to take them, so he gave them to another prisoner and said, ‘Goodbye. We’re gone,’” he added.

In a message on Twitter in July 2020, Morgan Ortagus, then-spokesperson of the United States State Department, emphasized that the 1988 massacre began on July 19, 1988.

“July 19th marks the anniversary of the start of on the so-called death commissions on the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini. These commissions reportedly forcibly disappeared and extra-judicially executed thousands of political dissident prisoners,” she said.

Nayeri’s admission again highlights the need to hold Iran’s genocidal regime accountable for its crimes against humanity. The ascendence of Ebrahim Raisi to the regime’s presidency and the fact that all perpetrators of that massacre, like Nayeri, defend the 1988 genocide only highlights the grim crisis of impunity in Iran under the mullahs’ regime.

The UN Human Rights Council must take concrete steps to address the crisis of systematic impunity in Iran and hold the Iranian regime accountable for countless crimes against humanity.