Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, October 15, 2021—Thursday marked the twenty-eighth session of the trial of Hamid Noury, an Iranian prison official charged with torturing inmates in the Gohardasht prison (Karaj) and taking part in the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners. Noury was apprehended by Swedish authorities during a trip to the country. Noury is now standing trial in a court in Stockholm, where many of his victims are giving harrowing testimonies of how he and other regime officials brutally tortured prisoners.
During Tuesday’s session Ms. Mahnaz Meimanat, the deputy-secretary general of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), testified through video conference from Albania. Iran’s regime has killed five members of Ms. Meimanat’s family. Another of her brothers has disappeared after being arrested and there’s no news of him. She is one of the plaintiffs in the Noury case.
“My brother Mahmood was a student in architecture in the National University. He started his support of the MEK in 1979,” Ms. Meimanat said in her testimony. “He was arrested in 1982 and was sentenced to four years in prison. During this time, he was brutally tortured in Evin, Ghezel Hesar, and Gohardasht prisons. After his release, he tried to join the MEK, but was arrested in April 1987. After searching for him thoroughly, my father found him in Evin prison. Mahmoud was transferred to Gohardasht around February 1988, where he was sentenced to five more years in prison for being a supporter of MEK.”
Abodllah Meimanat, Ms. Meimanat’s father, was a judge before the 1979 revolution, but stopped working after the revolution because of his knowledge of the mullahs’ nature. In June 1988, Mr. Meimanat contacted his daughter and warned about the situation in Iran’s prisons, citing alarming reports about the possible execution of political prisoners.
“He told me the names of several officials… including [Morteza] Eshraghi, who was the general prosecutor at the time. He also mentioned [Hossein-Ali] Nayyeri, [Mohammad] Moghiseh, and Hamid Abbasi [Noury] and stressed that they are all illiterate but are working as judges and are committing crimes,” Ms. Meimanat said.
Eshraghi and Nayyeri were members of the “Death Commission,” a group of regime officials who sent thousands political prisoners to the gallows in the summer of 1988. Also serving in the commission was Ebrahim Raisi, who is now the regime’s president, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the former justice minister. Moghiseh is a judge known for his harsh treatment of political prisoners who has been sanctioned for his human rights abuses.
During the summer of 1988, the regime carried out the swift and brutal execution of more than 30,000 political prisoners across Iran, mostly MEK members and supporters. The purge was directly ordered by regime supreme leaders Ruhollah Khomeini in an edict that explicitly stated that anyone supporting the MEK is an enemy of God and deserves to be executed.
In October 1988, Ms. Meimanat learned from her father that her brother had been executed in July. “After three months of hard efforts to find out about Mahmoud’s whereabouts, authorities told my father to go to Gohardasht, where they only handed him Mahmoud’s belongings. They did not deliver the body, nor did they say where he was buried,” Ms. Meimanat said.
“According to Mahmoud’s friends and cellmates, on July 30, prison authorities, including Nasserian [Moghiseh] and Hamid Abbasi [Noury] came to the ward and read out a long list of prisoners, which included Mahmoud. They were all taken to the ‘death hall’ [the corridor where prisoners waited to be sentenced by the death commission] and presented to the death commission. Mahmoud told his cellmates that the death commission what his name and crime was and he presented himself as a supporter of the MEK. Nayyeri swore at him and said ‘I should have sent you to meet your brother sooner,’ referring to my other brother who was executed a few years earlier.”
In 2009, Ms. Meimanat’s younger brother was arrested after visiting her in Paris and returning to Iran. “He was arrested because he visited me and there is no news of him. I’m the only survivor of my family, and this is the story of thousands of Iranian families,” Ms. Meimanat said. “Our family’s only crime was supporting the MEK.”
Mahnaz Meimanat (left) and Mehri Hajinejad (right) testified about executions and torture in Iran's prisons
Also testifying in court was Ms. Mehri Hajinejad, an ex-political prisoner who also testified from Albania. Ms. Hajinejad spent five years in Iran’s prisons, where she endured severe torture. Four of her family members, including three of her brothers, have been killed by the regime. On of her brothers, Ali Hajinejad, was executed during the 1988 massacre in Gohardasht prison.
“In a meeting with my mother, my brother Ali said that two weeks after his arrest, he was taken to the Revolution Court in Karaj, which was presided by Ebrahim Raisi, and was sentenced to eight years in prison,” Ms. Hajinejad said.
Ms. Hajinejad, who had also spent time in the regime’s prisons, was banned from meeting her brother. In 1986, she managed to meet him by using her sister’s identification documents. In the meeting, she saw the signs of brutal torture on Ali’s body.
“My mother met Ali for the last time in Gohardasht in March or April 1988. He said that the situation in the prison is very suspicious and the authorities are transferring the prisoners and he might not be able to meet her anymore,” Ms. Hajinejad said.
In November 1988, regime authorities told Ms. Hajinejad’s mother to send one of his relatives to Gohardasht prison.
“She went to Gohardasht on the morrow. The prison authorities told her ‘Ali Hajinejad does not exist anymore. He was an enemy of the Islamic Republic and we executed him,’” Ms. Hajinejad said. “The threw a bag in front of her and told her, ‘These are his belongings. Now go, you are a Monafegh [derogatory term used by regime officials to refer to the MEK] too.’ There was a rope in the bag, and this is how my mother found out that Ali was hanged. Later, one of the witnesses told my mother that Ali was executed during the first days of the massacre.”
In her testimony, Ms. Hajinejad also spoke about her own experience in Iran’s prisons. “In 1986, when I was released, many of my friends who were still in prison had finished their sentence and must have been released. But the regime kept them in Evin prison and executed them during the 1988 massacre,” she said.
Ms. Hajinejad also testified about the brutal executions in Iran’s prisons during the early 80s. “In 1981 and 1982, when I was in [Evin’s] ward 201, every night 100-200 prisoners were executed,” she said. “Every night, were counted the coup-de-grace shots. We heard the slogans prisoners chanted before they were shot dead. Many of them were schoolchildren, no older than 16-17 years old.
“In 1983, we were 600 female prisoners [in Evin]. [Assadollah] Lajevardi came inside the ward and said, ‘Don’t think that you will be released from prison and the people will come and embrace you with bouquets of flowers. We will throw grenades right here and kill all of you and break down the walls of the prison on your heads.’ Lajevardi said, ‘You have Massoud Rajavi’s blood in your veins. You are the sworn enemies of this system. You must not be freed.’ And that’s what they did—they executed 90 percent of those brave women during the 1988 massacre.”
While the court proceeded, a large group of Iranians resumed their protest rally in front of the court, calling for the prosecution of senior regime officials, including Raisi and supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Many of the protesters were family members of the thousands of dissidents murdered or executed by the regime.
The 1988 massacre has been described as a war crime and crime against humanity. Legal experts also recognize it as a “genocide” and should be addressed by international tribunals.
