In an opinion piece published on June 23, 2021, The Washington Times published excerpts of a statement by the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, in which she called for holding the Iranian regime’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi accountable for crimes against humanity.
In a statement on June 19, Amnesty International published a statement by its Secretary-General Agnès Callamard. She said in this statement: “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. In 2018, our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the Death Commission which forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity.”
“As Head of the Iranian Judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi has presided over a spiraling crackdown on human rights which has seen hundreds of peaceful dissidents, human rights defenders, and members of persecuted minority groups arbitrarily detained. Under his watch, the judiciary has also granted blanket impunity to government officials and security forces responsible for unlawfully killing hundreds of men, women, and children and subjecting thousands of protesters to mass arrests and at least hundreds to enforced disappearance, and torture, and other ill-treatment during and in the aftermath of the nationwide protests of November 2019.
Ms. Callamard added: “Ebrahim Raisi’s rise to the presidency follows an electoral process that was conducted in a highly repressive environment and barred women, members of religious minorities, and candidates with opposing views from running for office.
“We continue to call for Ebrahim Raisi to be investigated for his involvement in past and ongoing crimes under international law, including by states that exercise universal jurisdiction.
“It is now more urgent than ever for member states of the UN Human Rights Council to take concrete steps to address the crisis of systematic impunity in Iran including by establishing an impartial mechanism to collect and analyze evidence of the most serious crimes under international law committed in Iran to facilitate fair and independent criminal proceedings.”
Ebrahim Raisi was a member of the Death Commission in Tehran in 1988. Along with other criminal mullahs, he proceeded to direct and supervise the summary execution of thousands of members and supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) in Evin and Gohardasht prisons after two- or three-minute hearings. According to those who survived the massacre, Raisi played the prosecutor’s role.
Altogether 30,000 political prisoners, mostly from the MEK, were massacred in a matter of a few months and buried in unmarked mass graves. No information on the victims, the way they were murdered, or where they were buried has been given to the families of the victims.
In 1982, Raisi was appointed as the prosecutor of Hamedan while retaining his position in Karaj. He served in both positions from 1980 to 1983. In this period, mass executions of opposition groups, especially the MEK, were carried out with Raisi serving a pivotal role in these two provinces to suppress any form of dissent.
