{"id":251614,"date":"2021-11-30T07:05:05","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T12:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=251614"},"modified":"2023-02-01T09:55:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T08:55:35","slug":"the-only-thing-more-shocking-than-irans-1988-massacre-was-the-worlds-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/blog\/op-ed\/the-only-thing-more-shocking-than-irans-1988-massacre-was-the-worlds-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Only Thing More Shocking Than Iran\u2019s 1988 Massacre Was the World\u2019s Silence\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mass1988\"<\/p>\n

By Mohammad\u00a0Zand<\/b><\/p>\n

33 Years After the 1988 Massacre, I went to court. This time I was not the accused.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 35th session of Hamid Noury\u2019s trial ended on Wednesday. The trial has been transferred to Albania, so I, Mohammad\u00a0Zand<\/a>, along with my other friends who survived Iran\u2019s 1988 massacre,\u00a0could testify.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Noury was apprehended in 2019 due\u00a0to\u00a0his role, as a prison official in Gohardasht\u00a0prison, in the mass killings of dissidents in the summer of 1988.\u00a0 I am one of the plaintiffs of his case, as I witnessed his crimes in prison. Months after the first trial in Sweden, we finally got this chance to testify about what happened 33 years\u00a0ago in Iranian prisons.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was told that I would be the first person to testify in Albania.\u00a0So\u00a0I went to the District Court in Durres. When I first entered the hall, I suddenly recalled those dreadful days in the 1980s, mainly the summer of 1988, when my friends were executed rapidly.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was a student in Iran in 1981 when I was arrested for supporting the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of\u00a0Iran (PMOI\/MEK<\/a>), the main opposition to the theocratic dictatorship that had been established the previous year. I was promptly sentenced to 11 years in prison, and I went on to serve\u00a0a\u00a0sentence in its entirety. My brother, Reza\u00a0Zand, was arrested just around the same time and sentenced to 10 years on the same charge. He did not live to see the outside of the prison again.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1988, seven years into his sentence, my brother was killed as part of the Iranian regime\u2019s nationwide massacre of political prisoners. He was one of\u00a0the\u00a0thousands of individuals in Tehran and\u00a0Gohardasht\u00a0Prisons to have their existing sentences suddenly and arbitrarily upgraded to death sentences by the Tehran \u201cdeath commission\u201d that had been assembled in response to a fatwa from the regime\u2019s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini<\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When it was my turn to stand before the death commission, I asked its four members why they had executed my brother even though the criminal\u00a0court had already assigned him a lesser sentence. I was given no answer,\u00a0but it later became clear that\u00a0the\u00a0very purpose of the death commission was to eliminate anyone whom they believed was still committed to the democratic principles of the\u00a0<\/span>MEK<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I suspect that my brother knew what was going on before I did. When he was initially taken to face the death commission, he handed me his personal belongings and conveyed the belief that we would not see each other again. Even before that, when our mother visited for the last time before the prison was isolated from the outside world, he had expressed the same sentiment to her.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have no doubt that others shared my brothers\u2019 insight. Indeed, many of my fellow detainees became suspicious of the authorities\u2019 intentions as soon as newspapers stopped being delivered to the prison and televisions began being removed from cells. To the extent that these people conveyed their suspicions to friends and family members before the lockdown, the expectation of mass executions must have reached the wider world long before the massacre concluded, three months after it had begun.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The 1988 Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran: Eyewitness Accounts, Mohammad Zand<\/div><\/div>
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