āThe Great Massacre
Nasser Mohajer
Although thirty years have elapsed since Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the purge of political prisoners throughout Iran, the Great Massacre of 1988 is still an open file. All past and present leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) have maintained a policy of silence about this crime, and any reference to this atrocity is considered a political taboo by the Islamists in power. Yet, because of the surviving political prisoners, who fled Iran and landed in Western Europe and North America in the 1990s, as well as their families who stayed in Iran and fought to unearth the facts of this heinous crime, we now know that following Ayatollah Khomeiniās fatwas of 1988, all political prisoners were re-interrogated and retried in inquisition-like tribunals. Thereafter, thousands were taken blindfolded to the gallows and thousands flogged, day after day, to submit and succumb.
āCleansingā of the incarcerated was carried out in total secrecy. Not only were the detainees kept in the dark about the task of the commission that re-interrogated them, and the process of re-interrogation, but the authorities also refrained from revealing the burial sites of the executed, and forbade their families from holding public memorial services. Hence, many aspects of this massacre are still obscure. We still do not know the exact number of men and women killed during that bloody summer. We still do not know where they were buried. We still do not know why the IRI decided to undertake such a ācleansingā measure. And we still do not know the names of all the officials involved in the preparation and implementation of the deadly fatwa.
Accurate answers to these questions may never come to light as long as the IRI is in power. Yet, personal narratives of ex-political prisoners who survived the Great Massacre make it possible to reconstruct the events as they unfolded in summer 1988 in Tehranās two notorious prisons, Evin and Gohardasht. The political context and the chain of events at the time help us understand and allow us to draw rational conclusions about some of the underlying motives behind this crime, unprecedented in modern Iranian history.
The Pretext
On July 18, 1988, it was reported that Hojat al-Islam Ali Khamenei, then President of the IRI, had notified Javier PerĆ©z de CuĆ©llar,1 secretary-general of the United Nations, of Iranās acceptance of UN Security Council resolution 598 and the truce with Iraq. The news astounded political observers, as the IRI had resisted all international mediations throughout the eight-year war with Iraq, insisting on continuing the Jihad (holy war) until the overthrow of the āinfidel Baāathist regime of Saddam Hosseinā and conquering of the city of Karbala as the springboard to āliberate Jerusalem from the occupying Zionist regime.ā The surprising news was confirmed when Ayatollah Khomeini publicly endorsed the assertions of Ali Khamenei:
ā¦ on accepting the Resolution which, in fact, has been quite a bitter and unpleasant problem for all, me in particularā¦, due to certain events and factors, which I refrain from mentioning at this moment, I have given my approval to the Resolution and ceasefireā¦ Making this decision was more deadly than taking poison. I submitted myself to Godās will and drank this chalice of poison.2
This was on July 20. On July 25, the Peopleās Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) dispatched its Iraqi-based armed forces to the western border of Iran. The PMOIās National Liberation Army (NLA) crossed the borders to deal the āfinal blowā to the āReactionary Islamic Regime.ā3 As part of an overall strategy named Forough-e Javidan (Eternal Light) Operation, the PMOI called on the people of Iran to ārise up.ā4 Yet, neither in Tehran nor anywhere else in Iran did people heed the Mojahedinās call to take to the streets! Ignored by the masses and cornered in the western zone of Iran, they were quickly and brutally crushed in Karand5 and Eslamabad6 by the combined forces of the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards), the Basij (the Islamic militia), and other irregular armed bands and vigilantes. Some 1,263 NLA militants were killed7 in what the regime called the Mersad Operation.8 Dozens of Mojahedin were captured and immediately executed on the spot and many dispatched to Evin and Gohardasht prisons.9
With the suppression of this three-day operation came vengeance.10 The social base of the IRI in general, and the Iranian Hezbollah (Party of God) in particular, deeply upset about the outcome of the war and heartily despising the Monafeqin (hypocrites), flamed the anti-PMOI fever into frenzy, roaming the streets of big cities, calling for the execution and annihilation of the āMojahedin breed,ā and taking the law into their own hands. They even arrested ex-Mojahedin, who had been imprisoned, served their sentences, and stopped political activism once released.11 The prevailing mindset of the supporters of the regime is described in the three instances given below.
First, a Tehran daily reflecting the views of the āhardlinersā of the Islamic fundamentalist state wrote: āWe request that his Great Holy leader confront the criminals vigorously and get rid of them at once and forever.ā12 Second, during the Friday prayer of Tehran on August 16, Chief Justice Ayatollah Mousavi Ardebili claimed:
ā¦ they donāt know that people consider them inferior to animals. People are totally against them. There is immense public pressure on the judiciary as to why they are not executed. A number of them are in prisonā¦ people say that every single one of them must be executed. On the one hand, the judge has to deal with a number of problemsā¦ On the other hand, there is the pressure of public opinion. Most of all, I should thank these wretched beings who have made our task easy. We put dozens of them on trial. Files are brought in and taken out. I regret that only one fifth of them are dead. I wish they would all be wiped out so that this problem would be solved once and for all.13
Third is this quotation from a petition signed by āthousands of people from Arakā (an ancient city 260 kilometers south of Tehran):
We ask the people in charge of the judiciary to punish these heartless Monafeqin to the highest degree; to punish those who have taken refuge abroad and are involved in espionage activities against the system in Iran and are shamelessly attacking Iranās militarily, spilling the blood of the children of this nation and were captured in the recent Mersad Operation to be brought to justice and not to tolerate or forgive.14
As disingenuously as the procession organized and staged by the grey eminences of the Islamic theocracy, vengeance was on the move and genocidal mania escalated, with imprisoned Mojahedin throughout detention centers in Iran summoned to the inquisition tribunals and hundreds sent to the gallows.
The Background
We now know that Ayatollah Montazeri was behind the 1984 prison reforms, the pinnacle of which was the dismissal of Assadollah Lajevardi,15 the chief prosecutor of Tehran, known as the āButcher of Evin.ā However, forbearance or abstention from indoctrinating prisoners of conscience was not condoned by the principal authorities of the IRI. By mid-1986, the rift between Ayatollah Montazeri and Ayatollah Khomeini became insurmountable. The schism, though, at that time was invisible to many except the higher echelons of the politico-religious establishment. It became visible only after Ayatollah Montazeri was removed from the position of Khomeiniās āheir apparent.ā Two years prior to the massacre of the political prisoners, Ayatollah Khomeini had written to Ayatollah Montazeri:
I request that you consult the pious men who know about the countryās affairs. Then put that into effect so as to not, God forbid, harm your reputation, which would harm the reputation of the Islamic Republic. The irregular release of some hundreds of Monafeqin was granted by the order of a committee, whose sympathy [toward Monafeqin] and good intentions have led to an increase in the number of explosions, terrors, and thefts.16
In the turbulent and troubled days following the military excursion of the Mojahedin, the same point was raised by Assadollah Lajevardi:
Unfortunately, the manner in which the Monafeqin have been dealt with during the past years has been against the interests of Islam. According to the information at hand, most of the people who were set free from priso...