December 1988 AI INDEX: MDE 13/29/88 DISTR: SC/CO/GR
In recent months Amnesty
International has been gravely concerned by a new wave of political executions
in
The recent executions began
after the National Liberation Army, (led by the Iraq-based People's Mojahedin Organizations of Iran -[PMOI])
made an incursion into western
"On
arriving in the town and before reaching their homes people of
At the same time publicity
was given to pronouncements from various high-ranking judicial and other
officials that opposition elements should be dealt with severely, some
apparently proposing that they should be summarily executed as a matter of
course.
In weeks and months that
followed, until late October, family visits to the political prisoners were
banned, and precise information about the prisoners was impossible to obtain. At
the same time reports began to circulate that the mass executions were taking
place in secret. When the ban on prison visits was due to be lifted only some
visitors were able to see their imprisoned relatives; some were informed that
they had been executed. They were given prisoner's will and belongings, and
informed of the place of burial. Others were given no information, or received
conflicting reports.
These people resorted to
sending money or medicines to the prisoners, hoping to receive a signed receipt
from them in return, or toured government offices, or met religious and
judicial officials, seeking information, often in vain. Many relatives queued
outside the prisons hoping for information, or gathered at cemeteries where
some resorted to unearthing with their own hands some of the bodies buried in
shallow graves in desperate attempts to establish the whereabouts of the
prisoners. Relatives of executed prisoners described seeing groups of unmarked
graves, some were fully clothed, other covered in
shroud. Because of the shallow burial, the stench of bodies was overpowering. Some
families were warned against public mourning for their executed relatives.
The wife of one of the
prisoners, held for three years, told Amnesty International how she had been
informed when she went to visit her husband at Evin
Prison in August 1988 that he had been moved to a different cell, and that his
visiting schedule had been disrupted, but the families of other prisoners
gathered outside the prison said they believed he had been executed. After
anguished visits back and forth between Evin Prison
and the cemetery in the following days, she finally received confirmation at
the cemetery that he had been executed, but officials refused to say where he
was buried. Directed by other mourning relatives toward a group of the shallow,
freshly dug graves, all of them unmarked, she saw one that matched the size of
her husband's body, and dug the soil with her hands. The face was covered with
blood which she had to clean away before she realized that the body she had
uncovered was not that of her husband, but that of a much younger man. She
closed his eyes, and re-covered the body. Only several days later did she
discover her husband's burial place.
Amnesty International has
now received more than 300 names of prisoners executed in recent weeks and
months, and fears that the real total could amount to thousands. Many of the
victims were members of, or sympathizers with the PMOI, many others were
members of secular leftist groups such as Rahe Kargar, factions of the Organizations of People's Fadaiyan, and the Tudeh Party. Among
the most recent victims were at least 11 mullahs closely associated with
Ayatollah Montazeri, Ayatollah Khomeini's designated
successor as religious leader. Among the executed are
many former students, some of them still at school at time of their arrest,
professional people, including medical doctors and teachers, as well as manual
workers. A number of the victims are women, and in some cases several members
of a family have been executed. They include an unknown number of prisoners of
conscience. A large number of those executed had been imprisoned for several
years, and had been tortured, some having suffered similar treatment during the
rule of the Shah. Some had been held for years without trial, others had been
sentenced to prison term ranging from several months, following trials in 1980
and early 1981 for distributing leaflets or disturbing the peace at political
rallies, to life imprisonment. Amnesty International has been informed of cases
of former prisoners having been re-arrested and summarily executed. In most
cases it is not known whether there were further judicial proceedings before
the executions took place.
Initially a number of
officials publicly denied the political executions were taking place. In early
December, however, a statement made by President Khamenei
broadcast on
"Do
you think we should greet with sweets those who have links from inside prison
with hypocrites [term used for members of PMOI] who mounted an armed attack
inside the territory of the Islamic Republic? ... What should we do to them if
that contact is established? They are condemned to death and we will execute
them."
Amnesty International has
condemned the mass executions as a flagrant violations
of the fundamental right to life, and has sent hundreds of thousands of appeals
to the Iranian authorities to put an immediate end to the executions, and to
spare the lives of the thousands of political prisoners believed to have been
executed to the Iranian Government for comment.
INTERNATIONAL
SECRETARIAT,
1 EASTERN STREET,