Iran: U.N must investigate 1988 massacre in Iran

Iran Leadership tainted by 1988 executions, U.N must investigate 

 Former European lawmaker Struan Stevenson wrote an op-ed in the United Press International on Friday urging the United Nations to immediately launch a full and independent investigation into the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran and insist on the arrest and trial for crimes against humanity of the regime's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.

By Struan Stevenson

The summary execution of more than 30,000 political prisoners by the Iranian regime in the summer of 1988 surely must rank as one of the most horrific crimes against humanity of the late 20th century. The vast majority of the victims were activists of the opposition People's Mojahedin of Iran. The mass executions, in jails across Iran, were carried out on the basis of a fatwa by the regime's then-supreme leader, the murderous Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

A "death committee" approved all the death sentences. Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, a member of that committee, is today President Hassan Rouhani's justice minister. Other members of the committee hold prominent positions in the Iranian regime.

In documents that are in the public domain, we know that Khomenei decreed: "Whoever at any stage continues to belong to the Monafeqin (Farsi for "hypocrites" -- the regime's derogatory term to describe the PMOI/MEK) must be executed. Annihilate the enemies of 
Islam."

Monstrous acts of butchery like Katyn have become grisly milestones in the history of 
oppression and tyranny. So why is it that the West seems determined to ignore an even greater massacre that took place within our own lifetimes, the perpetrators of which are not only still alive, but in positions of power inside Iran? The truth about this horrific genocide was revealed on Aug. 9 this year when the son of GrandAyatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, the former deputy supreme leader of the Islamic Republic and the nominated successor to Khomeini, published a previously unknown audiotape in which Montazeri acknowledged that the massacre had taken place and had been ordered at the highest levels.

If the U.N. is to retain any shred of legitimacy, it must immediately launch a full and independent investigation into this appalling crime and insist on the arrest and trial for crimes against humanity of Khomenei, Rouhani and all of the other murderers whose bloodstained hands the West continues to shake.