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June 8, 2010
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, recent presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, and a number of sitting and retired judges and officials, including former head of the Supreme Court, Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili, are all liable to arrest under international law for complicity in the murder of thousands of political prisoners at the end of the Iran/Iraq War. This is the conclusion of a 145-page report by Geoffrey Robertson QC, who urges the Security Council to set up a special court, along the lines of the International Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to try these men “for one of the worst single human rights atrocities since the Second World War”.
The report concludes that the leaders were guilty of implementing a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in July 1988, which sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death without a trial. At Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and twenty other prisons throughout Iran, dissidents who had previously been sentenced to various prison terms and had refused to recant their religious beliefs were blindfolded and paraded before judges who directed thousands to the gallows. “They were hung from cranes, four at a time, or in groups of six from ropes hanging from the stage of the prison assembly hall. Their bodies were doused with disinfectant, packed in refrigerated trucks, and buried by night in mass graves, the locations of which are still withheld from their families.”
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September 29, 2009 On September 29, 2009, Ladan and Roya Boroumand, historians and founders of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, and Shadi Sadr, a lawyer, journalist, and human rights activist, received awards from the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation. The Lech Walesa Prize honored their work to promote human rights, freedom of expression, and democracy in Iran. Mr. Lech Walesa, who founded the Foundation, is the former president of Poland, leader of the Polish trade union, Solidarity (Solidarnosc), and winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize. The Lech Walesa Prize, established in 2008, honors “people who stand for understanding and international cooperation in solidarity, freedom, and for promotion of the fundamental values of Solidarity Movement.
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Reported executions in Iran
| August 2010 |
15 |
| This year (2010) |
169 |
| Last year (2009) |
399 |
| In 2008 |
381 |
| In 2007 |
468 |
These statistics are drawn from ABF’s daily surveys of more than 50 newspapers, websites, and blogs. The majority of these executions have been announced by the authorities themselves or reported by the semi-official media inside Iran. The exact number of executions is difficult to assess, however, as the reports are not always systematic and complete. Moreover, the Iranian authorities do not allow the independent investigation and monitoring of cases in which the death penalty is enforced. The numbers above include only individuals executed after formal judicial proceedings and do not include any who have died in detention or those assassinated or killed by security forces.
Other recent newslettersTerror in Buenos Aires : The Islamic Republic’s Forgotten Crime Against Humanity
July 18, 2009 Authorization Denied: The high cost of the public expression of dissent in Iran
July 9, 2009 Neither Free Nor Fair, Elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran
June 12, 2009 Thirty Years Ago in Iran
February 11, 2009 Justice Denied
November 28, 2008 Iran executes peaceful human rights advocate Ya'qub Mehrnahad
August 21, 2008 Addressing Homophobia in Iran
May 15, 2008 A Political Prisoner Binds his Lips Together
February 13, 2008 International Day For Tolerance
November 16, 2007 Coerced Confessions in the Islamic Republic of Iran
August 15, 2007
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