The National Council of Resistance of Iran has reported that the Iranian regime has yet again added more executions to their longstanding trend of carrying out the highest rate of executions per capita across the world.
Just three days after Ebrahim Raisi was inaugurated as the regime’s new president on August 8, the clerical regime carried out nine executions at three prison facilities across Iran. With the latest hanging that took place on Monday, the total number of deaths has reached 22 for the month of August alone. This now takes the year-to-date total to over 200.
The NCRI said, “At times, the regime’s judiciary has delayed the implementation of death sentences or even publicly vowed to re-examine politically motivated cases under intense international pressure. But in almost every case, the regime proceeds with the pre-determined punishment soon after the outcry has died down.”
According to the regime’s supposed human rights official, if international human rights principles are not in line with a country’s own laws, or in this case the regime’s harsh interpretation of Shiite Islam, they are not required to adhere to them.
Many activists have suggested that the continued acceleration of the pace of executions recently is a result of the emerging influence of the regime’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi.
The NCRI said, “Ebrahim Raisi was selected to that position on June 18 following by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the ultimate authority in the regime. But the vast majority of the population boycotted the sham election in protest over Raisi’s more than 30-year history of severe human rights abuses.”
Raisi became a major figure in the Tehran ‘death commission’ in the summer of 1988, where he oversaw the massacre of around 30,000 political prisoners. In recent years, he has played a leading role in the crackdown of protests nationwide. Most notably, the November 2019 uprising saw the murders of 1,500 protests over the course of a few days. Thousands of other victims were tortured over a number of months.
The NCRI said, “Of course, in light of Raisi’s legacy of human rights violations, the greatest concerns surrounding his promotion are related to the suppression of dissent and the violent punishment of persons affiliated with opposition groups like the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran. That organization was the prime target of the 1988 massacre, having been directly named in the fatwa which the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini used to set the stage for the killings.”
Raisi has openly defended Khomeini’s view that the massacre was part of ‘God’s command’ when he has reflected upon his role in the 1988 massacre during interviews and statements in recent years.
Secretary-General Agnès Callamard of Amnesty International recently commented that “Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance, and torture is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran.”
Her views are backed up by the appearance of a European Union foreign policy official at Raisi’s inauguration last week. The fact that the visit was agreed to by the European Union goes to show that Raisi’s culpability for the crimes against humanity that he has committed is being downplayed.
The NCRI said, “It is time to refer the mullahs’ appalling human rights record of four decades of crime against humanity to the UN Security Council for the adoption of concrete and punitive measures.”
