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Ongoing Executions Show Impunity Reigns Supreme in Iran

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The Iranian regime executed 42-year-old Abbas-Qoli Salehi in Isfahan prison on Wednesday. The regime’s judiciary upheld the death sentence of political prisoner Shaker Behrouz. The mounting number of executions once again shows the grim face of impunity in Iran under the regime of mass murderers.

Another prisoner, Amirhossein Hatemi, was killed under torture on September 23. On September 21, Shahin Nasseri died under torture in the Greater Tehran Penitentiary. Shahin Nasseri had witnessed the regime’s forces brutally torturing Iran’s wrestling champion Navid Afkari, who was executed in September 2020. Mr. Nasseri did not give in to the regime’s pressures and revealed the details of Navid Afkari’s torture.

There have been numerous reports in recent days of security forces arbitrary arrest members of ethnic and religious minorities. These recent incidents remind me of the mass executions of 1988 as it was a test of whether the regime’s impunity still persisted from that time. The regime’s current president Ebrahim Raisi was one of the leading figures of the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners in Iran.

In other words, this rising trend of human rights violations in Iran, although appalling, is not a surprise after the mullahs’ four decades of human rights abuses, and particularly with the regime’s current leaders.

When in June 2021, Ebrahim Raisi became the regime’s president, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said: “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance, and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran.”

In a letter published in December 2020, seven United Nations experts have sent a letter to the Iranian authorities stating that the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners could amount to “crimes against humanity” and criticized the international community’s inaction, which has created a sense of impunity among Iran’s officials.

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“There is a systemic impunity enjoyed by those who ordered and carried out the extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances,” the experts said, adding: “To date, no official in Iran has been brought to justice, and many of the officials involved continue to hold positions of power including in key judicial, prosecutorial and government bodies responsible for ensuring the victims receive justice.”

The U.N. experts also underlined that the international community’s “failure” to act” had a devastating impact on the survivors and families as well as on the general situation of human rights in Iran and emboldened Iran to continue to conceal the fate of the victims and to maintain a strategy of deflection and denial that continue to date.”

In other words, impunity reigns supreme in Iran due to the international community’s failure to hold the regime to account. It should be clear that mullahs’ would never halt their human rights violations and oppressing people. Oppressing Iranians is an inseparable part of the regime. Asking the regime to investigate its crimes is like asking an arsonist to put out the fire.

The regime would continue its human rights violations in the upcoming days and months to confront Iran’s restive society. The regime cannot continue its rule for even one day without torture and executions. The selection of a criminal like Raisi as president is a testament to this fact.

As the Iranian Resistance has repeatedly said, the international community should refer the dossier of the Iranian regime to the U.N. Security Council and prosecute its leaders for four decades of crimes against humanity and genocide.

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