{"id":263150,"date":"2022-09-01T20:08:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T18:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=263150"},"modified":"2023-02-06T12:51:09","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T11:51:09","slug":"granting-visa-to-irans-raisi-legitimizes-a-mass-murderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/granting-visa-to-irans-raisi-legitimizes-a-mass-murderer\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Granting Visa to Raisi, Turning a Blind Eye To People\u2019s Suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ebrahim
Bar Iran\u2019s Regime President From UN General Assembly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian regime\u2019s current president, was a deputy prosecutor for the capital city in 1988, he became one of four officials tapped to serve on Tehran\u2019s \u201cdeath commission\u201d<\/a> and thus implement the supreme leader\u2019s fatwa calling for the death of anyone who opposed the clerical regime or remained loyal to the leading democratic opposition. For approximately three months that year, Raisi helped to interrogate political detainees at Evin and Gohardasht Prisons, whereupon the death commission ordered the immediate hanging of anyone deemed guilty of \u201cenmity against God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nationwide, Iran\u2019s 1988 massacre claimed over 30,000 lives, with about 90 percent of the victims being members or supporters of the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran. Although similar bodies had been assembled throughout the country, the Tehran death commission was undoubtedly responsible for the largest single portion of those killings. Furthermore, the regime\u2019s then-supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, personally gave a broader mandate to Raisi<\/a> himself before the massacre was over in recognition of his uniquely enthusiastic implementation of the blanket death sentence.<\/p>\n

That promotion was the beginning of a pattern that led right up to Raisi\u2019s appointment as president. Khomeini\u2019s successor, Ali Khamenei, publicly endorsed Raisi in advance of the June 2021 sham election and clear the way for him to stroll into the office. Previously, Khamenei had already appointed Raisi first as head of the so-called religious foundation known as Astan-e Quds Razavi, then as head of the regime\u2019s judiciary. These roles allowed him to oversee, respectively, the financing of terrorism and extremist ideology, and the violent crackdown on a nationwide uprising in November 2019, which killed 1,500 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Raisi\u2019s appointment was intended as a green light for further crackdowns, in the face of strong public defiance of the culture of repression surrounding the mass killings in 2019. Since then, the regime has undergone several more uprisings, each of them associated to some degree with the organizing efforts and expanding public profile of MEK \u201cResistance Units\u201d.<\/p>\n

So far, the people\u2019s defiance has persisted, but the culture of repression has clearly intensified. Since Raisi\u2019s appointment, the rate of executions in Iran has nearly doubled, with more than 600 being carried out so far in 2022, compared to a little over 300 in all of 2021. This trend coincides with an accelerating rate of politically-motivated arrests, as well as a growth in the general enforcement of repressive laws, including those barring the practice of minority religions and mandating that women wear hijabs and separate themselves from men in society.<\/p>\n

All of this underscores Raisi\u2019s well-recognized identity as an unscrupulous criminal<\/a>. For the international community, this, in turn, should raise alarms about the impact of that brutality on the prevalence of terrorist threats that are traceable to the Iranian regime. Indeed, those threats have proliferated since Raisi took office, with some of the latest incidents being plainly directed toward the same goals as guided his actions at the time of the 1988 massacre.<\/p>\n

In July, the Iranian Resistance canceled a planned international conference at the MEK\u2019s compound in Albania, known as Ashraf 3, after it became clear that credible threats had been made against the gathering. The existence of those threats was revealed at roughly the same time as Albanian authorities reported they had been investigating suspected Iranian operatives in the country for four years, ever since another terrorist plot against Ashraf 3 was thwarted.<\/p>\n

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Raisi, Butcher of 1988 Massacre in Iran<\/div><\/div>
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