Pressure Increasing On U.N. To Investigate Iran’s 1988 Massacre

Last Thursday, more than 460 prominent international leaders signed an open letter calling on U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to investigate the Iranian regime’s notorious massacre of some 5,000 political prisoners in 1988, as well as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s involvement in the executions. Iran denies it committed these crimes against humanity and has repeatedly dispatched regime insiders like Mohammad Jafar Mahallati – today a tenured professor at Oberlin College – to do the same before the international community. 

Raisi was a key member of the regime’s “death commission” established after the end of the Iran-Iraq War to review the cases of political prisoners. He was one of the four judges on the committee overseeing the killings. Incredulously, since taking office in August, Raisi has repeatedly denied his human rights atrocities, saying, “I am proud to have defended human rights in every position I have held so far.” 

Mahallati, who served as the Islamic Republic’s Ambassador to the U.N. at the time of the killings, denied at the time that the regime had ordered widespread executions. Rather, he presented the deaths as “battlefield killings.” Mahallati reiterated Iran’s denials prior to the adoption of a resolution by the U.N. General Assembly, too, that expressed “grave concern” about “a renewed wave of executions in the period July-September 1988” targeting prisoners “because of their political convictions.” 

In June 2021, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) called upon Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar to relieve Ambassador Mahallati from his position on the faculty and disassociate Oberlin from Mahallati for his contribution in covering up gross human rights abuses. 

To read UANI’s resource Ebrahim Raisi, please click here. 

To read UANI’s letter to Oberlin College President Twillie Ambar, please click here. 

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