London, 29 Aug – One month after a campaign was launched to seek justice for the political prisoners murdered in the 1988 Iranian massacre and two weeks after an audio recording was released which showed the guilt of the Iranian leaders, current supreme leader Ali Khamenei and chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani have finally broken their silence.
They did not accept responsibility or express regret for their crimes, instead expressing alarm at the international condemnations of their crime and the “desacralization” of former supreme leader Khomeini and concern about growing global support for the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
On Saturday, August 27, Rafsanjani said: “The wave has embraced virtually all foreign opposition media, to the extent that the mayor of Paris recently held an exhibition which recreated the scenes of executions in those days… The extent of support for the Mojahedin Organization at this time merits being pondered.”
He added: “The main objective of our international and domestic enemies is to take revenge from the unprecedented role and status of Imam (Khomeini) in [the] contemporary history of Iran and the world.”
On August 24, in a meeting with regime officials, Khamenei expressed concern over the attempts of international communities to “distort the radiant image of the late Imam (Khomeini)” and “a complicated conspiracy [to] present the People’s Mojahedin Organization as a legitimate and civilian organization.”
Of course, they say this because they are scared of the retribution of the international community over their genocidal actions. The PMOI is part of the Iranian Resistance to promote a free and just Iran, so the Regime would attempt to smear them.
It’s worth noting that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps who works on behalf of the Iranian Regime is designated a terrorist organisation by the US State Department, not the PMOI.
Mehdi Khazali who worked at the presidential office under Khamenei and Rafsanjani, made a speech on August 26, revealing new information about the 1988 massacre.
He said: “The largest and most populous group which opposed the state was the People’s Mojahedin Organization… It could be annihilated only by authorization from the Imam (Khomeini). In fact, they wanted to uproot this group while the Imam was still alive. They said that if anyone was released, he/she would become a renegade; then we would be entangled in a situation where we would be facing a large number of people. So, we execute these people, and these executions would terrify the families and no one would dare to become a renegade.”
Khazali added: “According to an Intelligence Ministry directorate, some 20,000 people (were executed) in Tehran and provinces. This means that the 4,000 (mentioned by Montazeri, former heir to Khomeini) belonged to Tehran and according to someone like Maleki (chancellor of Tehran University following the 1979 revolution), nearly 33,000 people were hanged in [just five weeks].”
