London, 22 July 2024: Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran (JVMI) welcomes the landmark report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran on the 1988 massacre and Iran’s other atrocity crimes published for the first time today on the UN website.
The 66-page report by UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Javaid Rehman, entitled “Atrocity Crimes and grave violations of human rights committed by Islamic Republic of Iran (1981–1982 and 1988)”, concludes that the 1988 extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances of political and ideological prisoners constitutes both ongoing crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide.
The scale and severity of the 1988 massacre are a stain on the conscience of humanity. For far too long, the Islamic Republic of Iran has denied justice to the victims and secured impunity for the perpetrators while the United Nations failed to address the situation with the required firmness and determination. This ongoing impunity has only emboldened the Iranian authorities and perpetuated a cycle of violence and repression.
The Special Rapporteur’s report is a key step towards ending more than 35 years of UN inaction in relation to the 1988 massacre.
The JVMI calls on UN Member States to establish an international tribunal to bring perpetrators of the 1988 massacre to justice.
What was the 1988 Massacre?
In 1988, the government of Iran massacred an estimated 30,000 political and ideological prisoners. The executions took place based on a fatwa by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, targeting the main opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI or MEK). Three-member commissions known as ‘Death Commissions’ were formed across Iran sending political prisoners who refused to abandon their beliefs to execution. Members of other leftist groups were also executed in a subsequent second wave. The victims were buried in secret mass graves. The perpetrators continue to enjoy impunity.
Direct passages from the UN Special Rapporteur’s report:
In the aftermath of the government’s crackdown in 1981 and in subsequent years, tens of thousands of opponents of the Islamic Republic of Iran were arbitrarily imprisoned and tortured and thousands were subjected to arbitrary, summary and extra-judicial executions.
The 1988 Massacre in the Islamic Republic of Iran refers to the “systematic” and “widespread” attack on a civilian population resulting in mass murder, summary, arbitrary and extra-judicial executions as well as enforced disappearances of thousands of political prisoners between July–September 1988. Three and a half decades onwards – over 35 years – the enforced disappearances are continuing. An overwhelming majority of the executed prisoners were members and sympathisers of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), although hundreds of individuals belonging to leftist political groups and organisations were also forcibly disappeared and executed.
Political prisoners who were executed and those who survived the massacre suffered from severe forms of physical and mental torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The executions took place on the basis of the prisoners’ political affiliations to opposition groups. Additionally, they were also executed because they were perceived by their executioners either as hypocrites (monafeqin), practicing a heretical religious belief (in the case of members and sympathisers of the Mujahedin-e Khalq) or as apostates from Islam (Murtad) (in the case of members and sympathisers of leftist political groups). The victims were buried in secret and unmarked individual and mass graves across Iran, and the perpetrators have thus far evaded accountability and justice. Moreover the families of the victims continue to be denied the right to know the truth; they are not able to obtain a closure as the authorities refuse to clarify the fate of the victims and disclose the whereabouts of their remains, which means that the victims of the 1988 massacre remain forcibly disappeared.
Iran’s former Deputy Supreme Leader Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri is on record as saying that Khomeini’s son, Ahmad Khomeini, who was the Supreme Leader’s top personal assistant, had as early as three to four years prior to the 1988 massacre stated that all PMOI affiliates, including anyone caught reading their newspaper, should be executed.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa stated that all those imprisoned opponents who “remain steadfast in their position of nefaq in prisons throughout the country are considered to be mohareb [waging war against God] and are condemned to execution.” As noted previously, these imprisoned prisoners included those who had already been tried and were serving their prison terms. Reportedly, none were on death row. The text of the fatwa was later published in the memoirs of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, who in 1988 was the Deputy Supreme Leader and Khomeini’s heir-apparent. While Khomeini’s fatwa called for the execution of all political prisoners affiliated to the PMOI, who remained steadfast in their beliefs, there have been reports that another decree was issued regarding the execution of members of leftist political groups, although no such decree has ever been published.
The Special Rapporteur has received substantial evidence through testimonies from individuals, victims and survivors, confirming the commission of largescale “atrocity crimes” in particular crimes against humanity of the mass murder, torture, enforced disappearances, and other inhumane acts as well as receiving evidence and submissions directing towards the crime of genocide. These reports have been verified and substantiated by existing documentary records, victims’ testimonials and reports by civil society organisations. Numerous credible international non-governmental organisations have documented the enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killing of thousands of prisoners by Iranian authorities between late July and September 1988 for their political opinions and religious beliefs.
In light of the evidence available to the Special Rapporteur, he has taken the view that the “atrocity crimes” of the crimes against humanity in particular murder through arbitrary, summary and extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners, torture, persecution and enforced disappearances and other inhumane acts against political prisoner as well as genocide took place in the Islamic Republic of Iran between the end of July until end of September 1988.
The crime against humanity of enforced disappearance is continuing.
Khomeini’s 1988 fatwa is manifestly clear that he intentionally and purposefully ordered the mass executions of all steadfast PMOI members, an ordinance which was also subsequently implemented against members of other groups. The wilful executioners implemented Khomeini’s fatwa in full knowledge that they were committing international crimes by systematically and deliberately murdering political prisoners all across the country in a coordinated manner. Although there is a lack of unanimity in the precise numbers of those executed, there is no doubt that at least several thousand persons were murdered all across Iranian prisons as part of a “widespread” and “systematic attack” directed at prison population during the summer of 1988.
Once executed, the bodies of most victims were secretly packed in trucks and transferred to various locations throughout the country and buried in hastily dug unmarked mass graves. Some other victims were secretly buried in individual graves. According to evidence reviewed by the Special Rapporteur, the authorities did not return the bodies of any of the victims to families. They also refused to tell most families where the bodies were buried. In 2017, JVMI published a list of a reported 59 mass graves where the bodies of the victims were allegedly buried in secret. In 2018, Amnesty International and Justice for Iran published a joint report alleging that the Iranian authorities were destroying or damaging mass grave sites across Iran that were believed to contain the remains of the victims. Justice for Iran estimated that there may be more than 120 locations across Iran that contain the remains of these victims. Many grave sites are located in deserted areas inside or in the vicinity of cemeteries.
In the context of the 1988 massacre, alongside the prisoners, their families suffered and indeed continue to suffer from psychological or physical torture. It is important to recognise that the persistent refusal of the Iranian authorities after more than 35 years to provide the families with information about the fate of their loved ones or issue death certificates has inflicted profound and enduring suffering, effectively constituting a form of psychological torture against thousands of Iranian families. This ongoing denial of closure has left these families in a perpetual state of anguish and torment. The UN Working Group on Enforced of Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) has declared that the “anguish and sorrow” caused to the family as a result of an enforced disappearance is a “suffering that reaches the threshold of torture”. Similarly, the UN Human Rights Committee has recognised that the “anguish and stress” caused to the family by the “disappearance” of their loved ones and by the “continuing uncertainty” concerning their “fate and whereabouts” violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and thus constitutes a form of “torture” or other “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” against the families.
The specific requirements of the Genocide Convention and the challenges related to establishing genocide have already been considered. Khomeini’s fatwa, a key document of the 1988 massacre, lays bare the genocidal intent in physically destroying the PMOI, which was treated as a religious group by the perpetrators. The fatwa explicitly characterizes the PMOI’s alleged religious transgressions as “waging war against God” that must be punished by execution. Khomeini decreed “Since the treacherous monafeqin [PMOI] do not believe in Islam and whatever they say stems from their deception and hypocrisy, and since, as per the admissions of their leaders, they have deserted Islam, and since they wage war against God . . . it follows that those who remain steadfast in their position of nefaq in prisons throughout the country are considered to be mohareb [waging war against God]
The treatment of the PMOI as a religious as well as political opposition was established from the early days of the Islamic Revolution. According to Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, authorities sought to eliminate the PMOI many years before the 1988 massacre. On 24 July 1980, cleric Allameh, head of the Revolutionary Court of Bam, (in Kerman Province), decreed: “According to Imam Khomeini’s order, the People’s Mojahedin are apostates and worse than infidels. They have no financial rights, nor the right to life.” In an earlier pronouncement, Khomeini had stated: “Solving the problem of hypocrites is one of the major problems for our nation and for Islam from the beginning”. And in June 1980, he warned: “It is the hypocrites who are worse than the infidels . . . They were able to fool our pure, credulous, truthful young people with the propaganda they know and know well.”
Ten years later, in referring to Khomeini’s decree to massacre the PMOI and its supporters, Mohammad Yazdi, at the time Iran’s Judiciary Chief, said: “The Imam’s handwritten judicial order condemned the hypocrites (PMOI) – the totality of the organisation and its infrastructure, and not just individuals – so that there would be no hesitation in terming the activities by these individuals as ‘waging war on God’ and ‘corruption on Earth’.”
As noted earlier, in response to a question posed by the then-Chief Justice Ayatollah Abdolkarim Moussavi Ardebili about the fate of those PMOI affiliates already tried but not sentenced to death, Khomeini stressed that they should be executed because they were “the enemies of Islam”: “In all the above cases, if anyone at any stage maintains his [or her] position on nefaq [a pejorative reference to the PMOI], the sentence is execution; annihilate the enemies of Islam immediately”.
Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a member of Tehran’s “Death Commission”, and later the Interior and Justice Minister, further articulated the intent to eliminate the PMOI based on its religious beliefs, stating that because the PMOI were non-believers, their blood must be spilled.
Ever since the 1979 Revolution in Iran, those who ordered and perpetuated the “atrocity crimes” of crimes against humanity as well as genocide, particularly during 1980–1981 and 1988 have remained in government. Many were rewarded for their role in their crimes and have been promoted to high positions in the government, the judiciary, and within the judicial and domestic executive of the country. Conversely, those like the former Deputy Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, who was critical of the mass executions of 1988 were removed from office. After the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Montazeri was replaced by Ali Khamenei as the Supreme Leader. Ali Khamenei is alleged to have been involved in crimes against humanity during the 1980s. Montazeri was put under house arrest in 1997 after he questioned “the accountable rule exercised by the Supreme Leader”.
The magnitude and numbers of those involved in these crimes is enormous stretching from the Supreme Leader, the Sharia’s judges, the prosecutors, representative from the Ministry of Intelligence, members of the “death commission” and their facilitators; prison guards, members of the Revolutionary Guards and all those who facilitated the commission of these crimes in international law and their subsequent ongoing concealment.
The Special Rapporteur regrets to note that many of the individuals who are alleged to have committed serious crimes in international law remain in high-powered positions as of today. The former Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, acted as a member of the “Death Commission” in Tehran, and many witnesses in their testimonies made references to his role in the mass executions of 1988. Notwithstanding his death in May 2024, it is important that international justice must prevail; his death must not result in the denial of the right to truth, justice and reparations for the Iranian people. Those who committed crimes against humanity and other crimes in international law during the 1980s and subsequently must be held accountable and impunity must end in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Witnesses have provided various names of the members of the Death Commissions in their testimonies including Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who represented the Ministry of Intelligence; Hossein Ali Nayyeri, who was in charge of the committee; Motreza Eshraghi, who was Tehran’s prosecutor, and Ebrahim Raisi as acting prosecutor. The names of Nayyeri and Eshraghi are specified in Khomeini’s fatwa. The names of all four officials are further mentioned in the memoirs of Hossein Ali Montazari. Additionally, the four officials are heard addressing each other by name in a published audio-recording of a high-level meeting in mid-August 1988 between the four officials and Hossein Ali Montazari discussing the mass executions. Amnesty International has further named Alireza Avaei who participated in the Death Commission in Dezful as the prosecutor and Mohammad Hossein Ahmadi who participated in the Death Commissions in Khuzestan province as a Sharia’ judge. In a report in 2017, London-based NGO JVMI published the names of nearly 100 members of the 1988 “Death Commissions”, many of whom were later promoted to senior positions in the Government or Judiciary of Iran.
Having regard to the impossibility of obtaining justice at the domestic level, there are possibilities of accountability at the international level or in a foreign state outside the jurisdiction of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Special Rapporteur has consistently called for the establishment of an independent international investigative and accountability mechanism to advance truth, justice and accountability for the victims including by gathering, consolidating and preserving evidence with a view towards future prosecutions.
The Special Rapporteur seeks the establishment of an international accountability mechanism to ensure prompt, impartial, thorough and transparent criminal investigations inter alia of:
- the “atrocity crime” of crimes against humanity, committed against thousands of political opponents of the authorities, in particular their mass murder through summary, arbitrary and extra-judicial executions, and imprisonment, torture, rape and other sexual offences, other inhumane acts, as well as the enforced disappearances
- the “atrocity crime” of genocide during the 1980s including in 1981–1982 and 1988 committed with perpetrator’s specific intent of killing, or physically or mentally harming members of groups perceived as apostates, non-believers, believing in deviant religions or beliefs or members of religious minorities.
- sexual and gender-based crimes against women and girls, including cases of reported rape and other sexual offences, as well as the repression and persecution of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities during the first decade of the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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The Special Rapporteur’s report is available at this link on the UN website:
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/iran/20240717-SR-Iran-Findings.pdf
Journalists seeking comment should contact info@iran1988.org
Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran (JVMI)
22 July 2024