Iran: A group of Iranian dissidents in exile announced the existence of legal proceedings in New York against the President of the Islamic Republic, Ebrahim Raisi, who is supposed to travel next month to New York City to attend the meetings of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran said that the complaint, which it did not file itself, accuses Ibrahim Raisi of torture and murder during the mass executions of dissidents in 1988.
This civil complaint, which is similar to similar cases filed in Britain, confirms that Ibrahim Raisi was a member of the “death commission”, that was It is made up of four judges who ordered thousands of executions and torture of members of the banned Mujahedeen-e-Khalq movement. The People’s Mojahedin Organization is a key partner of the National Council of Resistance.
“There is no doubt that Ibrahim Raisi was a member of the (death commission) as an assistant prosecutor for the Tehran province,” attorney for the plaintiffs, Stephen Schneebaum, said at a press conference organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Washington.
The lawsuit was filed in New York last week on behalf of two people who were tortured at the time and a third whose brother was executed. It is based in particular on statements by Amnesty International and US sanctions accusing Raisi of participating in the violent repression of 1988.
In early November 2019, the United States included Raisi’s name on its blacklist of Iranian officials, who were sanctioned for “complicity in grave violations of human rights.”
Washington linked a campaign of executions of Marxist and left-wing opposition prisoners in 1988 and Raisi, who was then the assistant prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The plaintiffs are demanding compensation, whose value has not been disclosed, for acts of torture, summary executions, genocide and crimes against humanity.
In response to questions addressed to him in 2018 and 2020 about that era, Raisi denied his involvement in these executions but expressed his appreciation for the “order” issued by the late Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, to implement these measures.
