Newsletter and Updates - Human Rights in Iran


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A project of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation

Newsletter and Updates

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.”

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.

Reported executions in Iran

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.