The inhumane Iranian regime, acting on orders from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has launched a systematic campaign to erase the traces of genocide and crimes against humanity committed in the 1980s. New reports and images confirm that the regime is destroying and leveling Section 41 of Behesht Zahra Cemetery in Tehran, where thousands of members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) executed by Khomeini’s death commissions are buried.
Heavy machinery has been deployed to demolish the site, which has now been walled off and designated as “Mersad Parking.” Regime agents from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) have been stationed at the site to prevent access, photography, or documentation of the crimes.
For more than 40 years, Section 41 has been under constant surveillance by the regime’s repressive forces. Gravestones of MEK martyrs were repeatedly smashed, desecrated, or removed. While previous acts of vandalism were intended to intimidate families and erase memory, the current operation represents a complete obliteration of the site and a blatant attempt to conceal evidence of crimes against humanity.
#Iran Regime Seeks to Erase Evidence of 1980s Executions by Destroying Behesht-e-Zahra Section 41https://t.co/iDuulnkxO8
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 21, 2025
On August 11, 2025, the Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) warned:
“Erasing the evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity is participation in these atrocity crimes. Destroying evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity amounts to the continuation and participation in those crimes.”
Only days later, Tehran’s Deputy Mayor Davoud Goudarzi shamelessly admitted that the destruction of Section 41 was carried out with official authorization. He stated: “Section 41 was just left like that, and we needed a parking lot. We got permission from officials and turned it into a parking area.” This brazen confession underscores the involvement of the regime’s highest authorities, including Khamenei himself, in directing the obliteration.
International Condemnation
On August 22, 2025, Amnesty International strongly condemned the destruction, declaring:
“Iran’s authorities are destroying vital evidence of the mass executions of dissidents in the early 1980s by building a parking lot over their graves in Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery. This is another grim reminder of systemic impunity for the crimes against humanity of that era.”
Iran's authorities are destroying vital evidence of the mass executions of dissidents in early 1980s by building a parking lot over their graves in Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery. This is another grim reminder of systemic impunity for the crimes against humanity of that era. 1/6 pic.twitter.com/9cdTFoVbXs
— Amnesty Iran (@AmnestyIran) August 22, 2025
The organization further stressed that “individual and mass graves from the 1980s mass executions are crime scenes requiring forensic expertise for exhumation and evidence preservation. By destroying them, authorities are concealing evidence of their crimes and hampering the rights to truth, justice and reparations.”
Amnesty also recalled its earlier findings, documenting how Iranian authorities have bulldozed graves, built new structures over them, or dumped rubbish on burial sites in an effort to obliterate the traces of mass killings.
A Continuing Crime
In his July 2024 report, Professor Javaid Rehman, then UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, concluded that the mass executions of the 1980s amounted to atrocity crimes as well as genocide. He urged UN member states to invoke universal jurisdiction to investigate, prosecute, and issue arrest warrants for regime officials responsible for these atrocity crimes.
Rehman emphasized that “those with criminal responsibility for these grave and most serious violations of human rights and crimes under international law remain in power and control.”
Call to Action
The destruction of Section 41 is not an isolated act of desecration but a deliberate state policy ordered at the highest level of the regime to erase evidence of its atrocities. Under international law, such acts constitute a continuation and participation in genocide and crimes against humanity.
The United Nations, its Human Rights Council, and relevant international bodies must take urgent action to halt the regime’s criminal destruction of mass graves, safeguard the memory of victims, and ensure accountability. The perpetrators, from Khamenei down to the executioners and municipal officials carrying out his orders, must be brought to justice for their heinous crimes.