Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, July 1, 2021—Iranian regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei has appointed Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei as the new head of judiciary, according to state-run media.
Ejei will replace Ebrahim Raisi, the regime’s new president. Like his predecessor, Ejei comes with a background of violence, crime, and persecution against protesters and dissidents. Ejei has been blacklisted by the U.S. and European Union for his human rights violations.
Since the founding of the mullahs’ regime in 1979, Mohseni-Ejei has constantly served in important judicial and security posts, and has played a key role in cracking down on opposition members.
In 1983, Mohseni-Ejei became among the first members of the newly founded Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), a notorious institution that coordinates spying and terror activities inside Iran and abroad.
In 2005, he was appointed as minister of intelligence under former regime president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In 2009, then-judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani appointed Mohseni-Ejei as the general attorney, and later promoted him as the first deputy of the judiciary.
In 2017, during a press conference, Mohseni-Ejei defended the regime’s policy of mass executions and torture and said, “Since the beginning of revolution, the judiciary has dealt with corrupt people and terrorists and those who are disrupting security.”
Ejei acknowledged that lashing, hanging, crucifying, throwing prisoners from heights, and other medieval punishments have been the norm under the mullahs’ rule and “if a group wants to disrupt security, we will deal with them as we have throughout these years.”
At another press conference in 2016, Mohseni-Ejei defended the regime’s brutal killing of protesters in 2009 and said, “No one should try to defend the criminals of the 2009 sedition, the seditionists were criminals, they are criminals and those who were punished deserved it. Those who are still on the run, if the establishment finds them, they will be punished.”
In 2011, Mohseni-Ejei threatened women and girls who disobey the regime’s hijab rules and said, “The judiciary and the general attorney supports the state security forces for dealing with those who break hijab rules.”
In 2010, the U.S. Treasury blacklisted Mohseni-Ejei as one of several Iranian officials “responsible for or complicit in serious human rights abuses” and “who share responsibility for the sustained and severe violation of human rights in Iran since the June 2009 disputed presidential election.”
“As the Minister of Intelligence at the time of the June 2009 election, Mohseni-Ejei has confirmed that he authorized confrontations with protesters and their arrests during his tenure as Minister of Intelligence,” the U.S. Treasury wrote in a statement. “As a result, protesters were detained without formal charges brought against them and during this detention detainees were subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, and a denial of due process rights at the hands of intelligence officers under the direction of Mohseni-Ejei.”
