Reporting by PMOI/MEK
June 26, 2021—The appointment of a mass murderer as the president of the mullahs’ regime in Iran continues to draw condemnation across the world.
In a press release, Pierre Bercis, the president of France-based Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme organization, wrote, “The so-called presidential elections in Iran is just a show, and its goal was to appoint an obedient person as the head of state to be a pupil to the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who is the successor of Ruhollah Khomeini, the fundamentalist founder of this regime.
“The foreign interlocutors of this regime must know that Raisi is the main perpetrator of the 1988 massacre, whose victims were first and foremost members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), the only resistance organization to stand up against this regime. Raisi later made himself further known in the crackdown on peaceful protests.
“In line with its 40-year commitment, Nouveaux Droit de l’Homme calls on the International Criminal Court to open a file to investigate Ebrahim Raisi and his accomplices. A religious tyranny will never become a democratic regime.”
In a letter to the Italian prime minister, the Italian Parliamentary Committee for a Free Iran reiterated Raisi’s role in “countless crimes against humanity” and wrote:
“As you know, there no such thing as free elections in Iran. Facing an unprecedented boycott by the people, Iranian authorities admitted that voter turnout was lower than 50 percent. But inspectors who the polling stations in more than 400 cities confirm that the real turnout was around 10 percent.
“This shows there’s a huge gap between the majority of the people and the regime and, in reality, the ‘moderates vs hardliners’ rivalry does not exist. With the appointment of Raisi, the regime wants to show a more brutal repressive face. Raisi was a member of the ‘death committee’ which, in the summer of 1988, oversaw the extrajudicial execution of 30,000 political prisoners. The U.S. government sanctioned him for this and placed him in the blacklist of perpetrators of crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in the repression of any kind of dissent.
“Therefore we ask you to condemn the ridiculous presidential elections of Iran and recognize Raisi as a person who should not enjoy any kind of immunity. He should face trial in an international court for his crimes.”
In an article in New Europe, Tahar Boumedra, former chief of the UN Human Rights Office in Iraq and a Board Member of Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran (JVMI), wrote, “Europe faces a new moral challenge of either standing by its human rights principles or forgoing them for economic interests after Ebrahim Raisi, a mass murderer by all accounts, was declared the next President of Iran.”
Boumedra provided a detailed account of Raisi’s role in the 1988 massacre and called on European states to take a firm stand against the Iranian regime’s human rights violations.
“Surely, even the most imaginative minds could not fathom the possibility of [former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko] Mladic today holding the post of Bosnia’s chief justice or President. So how can EU leaders possibly accept a mass murderer like Raisi as the President of Iran? How can they possibly shake hands with a man who according to his former victims personally handed down sentences of stoning to death, amputation of limbs, and throwing prisoners off a cliff, in addition to ordering the mass murder of thousands of defenseless political prisoners?
In his article, Boumedra stressed that the failure of the international community to take any action against Raisi and other perpetrators of the 1988 massacre has “fueled a culture of impunity in Iran.”
“Instead of recognizing the result of the regime’s unfair and illegitimate poll, EU leaders should support the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry into the 1988 massacre and publicly warn Iranian leaders that any crackdown on likely future protests will be immediately met with hard-hitting blanket sanctions against the regime.”
