On July 1, 2019, Gholam-Hossain Esmaili, spokesperson for the Iranian regime judiciary said in a television interview, “We don’t have political prisoners.”
Esmaili called current political prisoners “terrorists who are against the Iranian regime in its entirety.”
“Those who oppose the Islamic Republic are either terrorists or spies of foreign intelligence services so they are not considered as political prisoners,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ali Motahari, a member of the regime’s Majlis (Parliament) said on Tuesday, July 2, in an interview with the state-run Etemad newspaper, “In Iran, we have both political opponents and political prisoners.”
Motahari said the judiciary and security and intelligence institutions use the term of “security criminal” for opponents and critics of the regime to classify them as security risks and avoid subjecting them to the rules of political crimes.
This is not the first time that the Iranian regime’s judiciary denies the presence of political prisoners in Iran. Previously, in January 2019, the former head of the regime’s judiciary, Sadeq Larijani said, “When someone takes an action against [national] security, the action is a crime and should have a different due process.”
After the 1979 revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the mullahs’ regime, said, “We won’t have political prisoners.” Perhaps what he actually meant was that he would purge the country of political prisoners, as he tried to do in the summer of 1988, when he ordered the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mostly supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran ( regime because they exercised their human rights. We demand the release of these political prisoners and call on the international community to hold the Iranian regime accountable for the abuse of its citizens. pic.twitter.com/G9GfktJMJ1
— U.S. State Dept | Democracy, Human Rights, & Labor (@StateDRL) September 13, 2018
In conclusion, the Iranian regime is inherently criminal and murderous and has no respect for the basic human rights of its people or international laws and norms. This regime will do anything to survive, therefore it is the duty of the international community to hold this regime to account for its human rights violations. The Iranian Resistance has repeatedly stated that the case of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners should be referred to the UN Security Council, and the perpetrators of this crime, who are current top-ranking authorities of the regime, should be punished.
