Attorney General’s presidential run reignites requires accountability
June 3, 2021 – Iranian presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi ought to be investigated for crimes towards humanity, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) stated in an announcement immediately.
“Raisi is a pillar of a system that imprisons, tortures and kills those that criticize state insurance policies,” stated CHRI Secretary-General Hadi Ghaemi.
“Instead of working for president, he ought to be tried in a good court docket and held accountable for his function within the extrajudicial executions of hundreds of prisoners,” Ghaemi added.
Raisi was appointed judiciary chief by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in March 2019 and has performed a key function within the politically motivated executions and wrongful imprisonment of numerous Iranians over the previous three a long time.
In 1988, Raisi was appointed by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to a four-man “Death Committee” that decided their “loyalty” to the brand new Islamic Republic, paving the best way for the execution and burial in unmarked mass and personal graves of at the very least 4,500 to five,000 prisoners who had already been tried and served their sentences.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who briefly succeeded the supreme chief on the time, condemned the killing, saying in an audio recording: “I imagine that is the best crime that happened within the Islamic Republic for the reason that Sixties.” [1979] The revolution and historical past will condemn us…History will file you as criminals.”
No one in Iran has ever been held accountable for the killings. Instead, authorities authorities have harassed and intimidated households of the victims who’ve demanded investigations and tried to find the our bodies of their family members, whereas members of the loss of life committees have been appointed to numerous senior authorities positions within the years since.
The UN human rights consultants’ name for accountability for the 1988 mass executions was conveyed to the Iranian authorities in September 2020.
“We are involved that this example might quantity to a criminal offense towards humanity,” the UN consultants stated, including that if the Iranian authorities continues to refuse to carry these accountable accountable, the worldwide group “ought to launch a global investigation.”
There will likely be no justice beneath Attorney General Raisi
Attorney General Raisi’s first two years in workplace (2019-2021) have been marked by an intensification of repression and rights violations, together with:
Execution
Iran ranks second on the planet in absolute variety of reported executions, and accounts for greater than half within the Middle East and North Africa area. Iran stays within the minority of nations that impose the loss of life penalty on juvenile offenders. Protesters and dissidents have been executed, together with dissident Ruhollah Zam, who was kidnapped from Iraq. Non-Persian Iranians, together with Arab, Baluchi, and Kurdish political prisoners, stay disproportionately executed. For the primary time in twenty years, a person was executed for ingesting alcohol. Executions are routine after prosecutions that lack due course of and trials that don’t adjust to worldwide honest trial requirements.
Persecution of spiritual minorities
Christian converts and Baha’is continued to be arrested and sentenced to jail due to their religion, and Baha’is continued to be denied the appropriate to increased schooling.
Lack of accountability
During mass avenue protests in November 2019, safety forces killed at the very least 300 protesters and bystanders with impunity. No senior officers have been held accountable when the Revolutionary Guards shot down a passenger jet, killing 176 individuals. Interrogators continued to abuse prisoners with impunity, together with torture, denial of medical therapy, and coercing false “confessions.”
Abuse of political prisoners
People continued to be tried for his or her peaceable actions, and political prisoners, particularly girls, confronted harsh therapy, together with:
Attacks on unbiased counsel
Detention of twin nationals as political pawns
Prior to his appointment as lawyer common, Raisi, 60, served in Iran’s prime judicial workplaces, together with as Tehran prosecutor and chief prosecutor for clergy affairs, and was a member of the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council.
Supreme Leader Khamenei additionally appointed Raisi in 2016 as custodian of the Astan Quds Razavi spiritual establishment, the nation’s richest charity run by officers and clerics who are usually not required to reveal their funds and report solely to the supreme chief.
The incontrovertible fact that Raisi was successfully elected whereas most different candidates have been disqualified reveals the Iranian political institution’s boundless impunity and shameful glorification of egregious human rights violators.
“This will not be an election, it is a choice and appointment,” Ghaemi stated.
“Raisi rose to the highest of Iran’s management by persevering with the state’s systematic human rights violations with impunity,” he added. “But no title can absolve him of his crimes.”