Iran: Maryam Rajavi urges international community to prosecute officials responsible for 1988 in Iran
Meeting near Paris to seek justice for 1988 Iranian prison massacre draws major international delegates
The event drew delegates from around
the world to reflect on the impact of the events, the search for justice, and
the current balance of power in Iran, where recent events have
provoked sharp
divisions within Tehran.
Ed Rendell, chairman of the 2016 U.S. Democratic National
Convention and advocate for
political change in Iran, spoke at the event.
“If this [revelation] doesn’t spawn
outrage, nothing will. Many Nazis were prosecuted
way after 28 years,” he said, referring to the potential for prosecution of
those implicated in the massacre.
Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières and
Médecins du Monde and Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Nicolas
Sarkozy, criticized the international
community’s silence on the massacre.
“We are dealing with this kind of realpolitik that makes
some people prefer not to turn over stones because they don’t want to see what
blood is underneath,” he said.
Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of the
Resistance of Iran (NCRI) was one of the first speakers. She recounted
agonizing stories of the imprisonment and execution of members of the
resistance in 1988, many of whom were defiant in the face of imminent death.
The 1988 massacre, in which thousands of members of the People’s
Mojahiden of Iran (PMOI) were executed for their political affiliation, has so
far gone unrecognized by all western governments except Canada. It has been
called the largest unacknowledged
crime against humanity since World War II.
A resurgence of interest inside and outside of Iran in the
events of 1988 was sparked by an audio tape released by the son of Hussein-Ali
Montazeri, the heir apparent to Ayatollah Khomeini at the time of the killings.
In the tape, Montazeri condemns the massacre before a “death panel” consisting
of high-ranking Iranian cabinet members in a conversation which frankly
discusses the organized nature and huge extent of the executions. This and
other acts of dissent by Montazeri resulted in his expulsion from the Iranian
government; he was placed under house arrest until 2003.
- More then 30,000 political prisonners were massacred in Iran in
the summer of 1988
- The massacre was carried out on the basis of a fatwa by
Khomeini.
- The vast majority of the victims were activists of the
opposition PMOI (MEK).
- A Death Committee approved all the death sentences.
- Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, a member of the Death Committee,
is today Hassan Rouhani’s Justice Minister
- The perpetrators of the 1988 massacre have never been
brought to justice.
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