Patrick Wintour – The Guardian June 19, 2021
If Joe Biden thinks Vladimir Putin deserves to be called a killer, his description of Ebrahim Raisi, the 60-year-old president-elect of Iran, is likely to be unprintable.
The youngest member of the 1988 Tehran death committee, Raisi has been accused of systematically sending as many as 3,000 people to slaughter. When he was head of the judiciary floggings and executions flourished, yet many see this election as a staging post to his becoming supreme leader when Ayatollah Khamenei dies.
Raisi was 28 at the time of the massacres – a Tehran deputy prosecutor who stood in on the death committee for Morteza Eshraghi, Tehran’s chief prosecutor.
Acting under orders from the then supreme leader, an ailing Ayatollah Khomeini, and with the war against Iraq ending in a truculent truce, the committee agreed to eliminate jailed members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) resistance movement on the basis the MEK had self-evidently committed acts of treachery at the end of the war. Any that did not renounce their support for the MEK were doomed.
The scale of the butchery is set out in a 130-page report written by the London-based human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC. “They were hung from cranes four at a time or in groups of six with rope hanging from the front of the stage on an assembly hall.” Others were taken out at night and killed by firing squads. After finishing off the MEK, the revolution went on to devour the communist Tudeh party and Trotskyists.
Raisi’s role as the most junior committee member is disputed. In a lecture in May 2018, he confirmed he was present at the 15 August 1988 meeting when Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri urged the committee to desist, but added: “During the period [in question], I was not the head of the court. The head of the court issues sentences whereas the prosecutor represents the people.”
It was at that meeting that Montazeri said: “I believe this is the greatest crime committed in the Islamic Republic since the [1979] revolution and history will condemn us for it…. History will write you down as criminals.” An audio file of the meeting which dates to August 1988 was posted on Montazeri’s official website, run by his family and followers, on 9 August 2016, but has since been removed by the ministry of intelligence.
Raisi’s complicity never arose during the three TV debates, and perhaps it concerns few ordinary Iranians, who regard the MEK as terrorists and, judging by the results, are more worried about house prices, and jobs.
Born in Iran’s holy second city of Mashhad, the birthplace of the current supreme leader and relatively close to the border with Turkmenistan, his father died when he was five, and by the time of the 1979 revolution, he was a young seminarian in the holy city of Qom. He was immediately picked to become the prosecutor-general of the city of Karaj, outside Tehran, at the age of only 20, and then moved to Tehran.
Raisi married politically and happily when he met the daughter of Ayatollah Alam al-Hoda, another prominent regime figure from Mashhad. Hoda, a conservative, was throughout the 1980s to the political right of Khamenei, the future supreme leader. His wife, Jamila Alam al-Hoda, is a university professor and lectures on how citizenship education suffers from spiritual poverty.
It has only been in the past decade that Raisi became Khamenei’s favourite son. In March 2016 he appointed him to run Astan Quds Razavi, one of Iran’s oldest and wealthiest religious institutions. In 2017 he was given approval to try to dislodge Hassan Rouhani as president after one term, and although he garnered 15.8m votes, Rouhani secured 57.1% of the vote. Raisi’s appeal to the working class won him only seven provinces, all in the east of Iran closer to his birthplace.
In this election, protected by a phalanx of other conservative candidates, Raisi made few specific commitments about how he would create a strong economy, or improve housing, stressing his fight against corruption including in the judiciary. But his period as head of the judiciary has not been marked by reform, despite promises.
Throughout the campaign he tried to soften his image. “I have tasted poverty not merely heard about it,” he said. His daughter, Reyhaneh Sadat Raisi, went on one TV chatshow to insist her father was a kind man.
He also met leading executives from leading reformist newspapers, some of whom praised him afterwards, prompting resignations. The survival of a semi-free internet in Iran will be one of his early tests.
like him i imagine JHWH + ALLAH as friendly massmurderer.
I cannot stand these fake “Holy men”; and what is the real story about the Ayatollah and his training in London? It may have been The Truthseeker that told us, quite a while ago. I am disgusted with Islamic male megalomania in any case. Adam, Noah, David, Moses, Jesus, Gabriel, Jehovah, apostles, priests, imams, Mohammed, all male, so the imbalance is a problem. At least Catholics put Mary forward.
Obviously it would be advisable to look for any Jewish connections,after all some of the greatest mass killers of the Soviet period were crypto Jews.
Including Uncle Joe Stalin who made the USSR the FIRST country in the world to recognise the new state of Israhell.
Why is there a fabricated story from the Fake News outlet the Guardian posted here on TTS? Seriously, who decided to post a fake news article?
Regardless, cue the ignorant shills who will insist Iran doesn’t even exist because, you know, the earth is flat, the sun revolves around a flat disc on the shoulders of Atlas, and two plus two equal five. On three … two … one …
The Semites (Jews/Arabs) are mongrels. Cross breeds formed thousands of years ago through various melanges with Caucasoids, Negroids & Mongoloids. A chaotic mish-mash of mongrel maniacs mismanaging & reshaping the world according to their miscegenational ‘ideals’ & objectives…
Another enemy of the jews is painted as a monster by their media. Does anyone seriously believe this shite?
And how many have the Bush crime family massacred? They are real genocidal maniacs with millions of victims but the jew media won’t print that!
Hmm.. When I read the Guardian, I always use my reverse psychology ..
Guardian..”Bad Guy” I see a “Good Guy” or a actually a thorn on the backside of the putrid swamp scums …
I’ve been busy during this election and I am extremely happy that Raisi got elected, finally I can rest for a few days! This will have very important consequences for Iran and the region. Just as I said before, Iran is now becoming truly unstoppable as there will be no friction internally! This means people have won over massive mass-media and enemy psi-ops.
Look up MEK, it used to be on US terrorist-list but in a clear double-standard move was removed in 2012; John Bolton loves them and actually got paid for his speeches in MEK events!
(https://charityandsecurity.org/archive/us_removes_mek_from_terrorist_list/)
MEK has killed over ~12000 Iranians to this day. The order of execution attributed to Raisi actually came from Imam Khomeini himself only after they(MEK) allied with Saddam (during Iran-Iraq war). MEK did lots of terror attacks including high level ones, just after the revolution. Many of them had repented and were released the first time only to join Saddam in his war against Iran. So the definition of the word “traitor” is clear and anyone defending MEK is either under the effects of enemy propaganda and MSM or has the same savage mentality of ISIS and MEK.
In Operation Mersad at the end of Iran-Iraq war, Iran’s army under the command of lieutenant general Sayad Shirazi crushed MEK. In the photo linked below you can see him on the left and on the right is the MEK woman that planned the assassination of Sayad Shirazi later; she was killed in another scenario. (https://cdn.tabnak.ir/files/fa/news/1399/1/22/1159358_336.jpg
MEK has done some very nasty atrocities not only in Iran but also in Iraq.
Now you may ask what is the ideology of MEK; they are a cult, some weird mix of Socialism and Islam, obviously they have no clergy or dedicated religious strategists/scholars! Iran being the hub of all ideologies and sects… have been a soft-battleground for various ideologies. Just when the world was saying that religion is the “opium of the masses”, Khomeini proved it false by energizing and mobilizing people with religion! With the fall of Soviet Union and the famous letter of Khomeini to Gorbachev advising him to avoid liberalism and also predicting the fall of socialism only one major group was left behind, and they were the liberals and Neo-liberals… who were just disposed off in this election! They no longer have any major popular support among Iranians and with Raisi as president the transformation of Iran’s sub-systems such as banking and education will resume and accelerate. Note that Rohani’s government still will be in power for some 45 more days.
As the whole world is still playing ping-pong between Liberalism and Socialism… I am proud to announce that Iran has officially moved beyond both and so the core Shiite revolutionary system will advance, grow and transform. We can expect major transformation of sub-systems with the banking system being at the top of the list.
@lewis jones
There is a Shiite group in London allowed to do as they please and have multiple TV channels and under the protection of Queen who are anti Iran and love causing problems with Sunnis!
Regarding “male megalomania”:
Firstly you should know that Iran’s supreme leader regularly visits Fatima Masumeh Shrine and pays respect to the woman buried there. Iranians who were going to fight ISIS could not go openly in the beginning so they called themselves Defenders of the Shrine, obviously ISIS liked to destroy all historical sites specially the Fatima Masumeh Shrine in Damascus-Syria. Granddaughter of the prophet Mohammad ص is buried there. But you don’t get the feel!… so let me show you one such event in which Shiites show their love for the daughter of prophet ص.
https://youtu.be/uuZpJvJX7Jw
I have posted on “significance of chest-beating” with reference in Bible too! Generally speaking unlike the Hindus who consider all forms of emotions as negative and hindering logic, we believe only the egotistic emotions are harmful and in contrast selfless emotions are actually very useful and enhance logic and intellect. I had some exchanges with Les Visible in some comments about this.
I need to correct the name of the second shrine in Damascus: Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque/Shrine
One more thing: the MEK is currently led by a woman and in my previous post I also talked about another MEK woman that planned assassination of general Sayad Shirazi… so this too shows a great example of evil female power!
To the Iranian poster– I can see the elegant style, and like to be educated about Iran, but: we hear that the wife of the Prophet was very young and this tends to give us Patriarchy (adult male, child female), as the man will be the senior party. Maybe the reverence for Fatima could be called tokenism. Jews have Rachel, Catholics have Mary. That’s about all the female side gets.