Audio File Reveals Ayatollah Montazeri’s Meeting with the Members of ‘Death Committee’
10-August-2016
Category: executions
Breathing in Confinement – Ayatollah Montazeri’s official website has published a 40-minute-long audio file of this Shia cleric meeting with four of Iranian officials who are responsible for mass executions of political prisoners in Tehran in the summer of 1988.
In this audio file, Ayatollah Montazeri in a meeting with Hossein Ali Nayeri (judge), Morteza Eshraghi (Attorney General), Ebrahim Raisi (Deputy Prosecutor) and Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi (Ministry of Intelligence’s representative), expresses his objection against the mass executions in the prisons in the country.
During the meeting, the “harsh manner” in prison in the years before the executions has been discussed. As well as, issues such as “execution of a 15-year-old girl” or “the execution of pregnant women in Isfahan”.
At the beginning of the meeting Ayatollah Montazeri calls the mass executions in summer of 1988, “the greatest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic” and then warns the 4 men who are known as the members of the “death committee”, that in the future they will be known as “criminals”.
Also, according to Ayatollah Montazeri, “The ministry of Intelligence” and “Mr. Ahmed”, Ruhollah Khomeini’s son, has been calling for the executions since long ago.
In this audio file, the members of the committee insist that there have been several cases of 15 or 16-year-old prisoners.
During the meeting, Ayatollah Montazeri also warns about the coming of the month of Muharram and calls for cessation of executions that Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi in response asks for the permission to execute “a group of 200 prisoners”, which have already been prepared for execution.
The mass executions in summer of 1988 is one of the cases of human rights abuses that so far have received extensive discussions.
Reza Malek, a former employee of the Ministry of Intelligence, in a video message from Evin prison in Tehran, addressed the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and announced the number of executed prisoners in that period to be 33 thousand and 700 people.
This audio file which according to Ayatollah Montazeri’s website has been published “with integrity and without any edits” can be heard below: