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On Wednesday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran held a press conference in the United Kingdom to highlight recent, formal requests for an investigation into crimes against humanity committed by the regime\u2019s new president, Ebrahim Raisi. The latest of these requests was sent to Police Scotland\u2019s Chief Constable Iain Livingstone by a former Scottish representative to the European Parliament, Struan Stevenson, in response to the news that Raisi may attend the COP26 climate<\/a> change conference in Glasgow next month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is essential that Police Scotland seek the prosecution of Raisi,\u201d Stevenson wrote in an editorial for The Scotsman. \u201cThere must be no impunity for mass murderers like this man.\u201d He reiterated this message in Wednesday\u2019s press conference at the Village Hotel in Glasgow, sitting alongside Hossein Abedini, a member of the NCRI\u2019s Foreign Affairs Committee. Stevenson was also joined by Tahar Boumedra, a former UN human rights official who now heads the Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran, as well as by three of the five survivors of the 1988 massacre who signed their names to the 111-page dossier that Stevenson submitted to Police Scotland.<\/p>\n The press conference noted that similar dossiers have been presented to authorities in other Western nations, with the intention of facilitating multiple investigations into Raisi\u2019s past human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. These, Stevenson said, would ultimately make it easier for the International Criminal Court to complete its own investigation and to indict Raisi for his role in the 1988 massacre<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2019, Swedish authorities arrested the former prison official Hamid Noury after invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction. That principle allows for serious violations of international law to be prosecuted by any country\u2019s judiciary, even if the crimes in question took place elsewhere and involved both perpetrators and victims who are citizens of another nation.<\/p>\n Raisi\u2019s crimes are among the most serious that could be prosecuted by the ICC, even has the legal definition of genocide. In a conference on the 1988 massacre following Raisi\u2019s presidential inauguration, British human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson<\/a> explained that the 1988 massacre was carried out on the basis of a fatwa from the regime\u2019s hen-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini which described its targets as enemies of God and signaled an intention to wipe out entire faith communities that opposed the regime\u2019s ultra-hardline interpretation of Islam.<\/p>\n Also read:<\/strong><\/p>\n Iran\u2019s Raisi Domestic and International Trips Fail<\/a><\/p>\n To Prevent Worse Crackdowns on the Iranian People, Arrest Iran\u2019s Regime President<\/a><\/p>\n With Iran\u2019s Raisi, Time for UN to End Regime\u2019s Impunity<\/a><\/p>\n Robertson and other legal scholars have argued that both the nature and the scale of the crime create clear responsibilities on the part of nations that have ratified the Genocide Convention.<\/p>\n In his remarks at Wednesday\u2019s press conference, Boumedra noted that while Raisi has become the central focus of calls for investigation and arrest, JVMI has identified more than 70 individuals as bearing responsibility for some or all of the massacre\u2019s estimated 30,000 victims.<\/p>\n As deputy prosecutor for Tehran at the time that Khomeini issued his fatwa, Raisi became one of four individuals to sit on the \u201cdeath commission\u201d that oversaw killings in Evin and Gohardasht Prisons. Survivors of the massacre have described Raisi as being especially committed to a broad application of Khomeini\u2019s call for the mass execution of dissidents, especially members of the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ahmad Ebrahimi, one of the survivors who participated in Wednesday\u2019s press conference, described himself as being one of only 10 to 15 residents of Gohardasht Prison\u2019s political ward who remained alive at the end of the massacre. He also testified he personally observed Raisi at work on the death commission, issuing death sentences in as little as one minute after merely asking detainees whether or not they would denounce the MEK and swear allegiance to the theocratic system.<\/p>\n The participants in Wednesday\u2019s press conference also noted that with 33 years have already passed since the time of the massacre, the number of surviving eyewitnesses is bound to decline sharply if justice is delayed much longer.<\/p>\n NCRI's @Hoabedini<\/a>, told reporters at a press conference: "Raisi should be held accountable for genocide & the many crimes against humanity that he committed as a senior official of the Iranian regime," Abedini told reporters #ProsecuteRaisiNOW<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/a9ATULp5cU<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/w1ENjP1kxo<\/a><\/p>\n — Dowlat Nowrouzi (@DowlatNowrouzi) October 13, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n