Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeStatementsStatements: Human RightsExecutioner Replaces Another Executioner

Executioner Replaces Another Executioner

ncri-statement-600

Rouhani appoints another 1988 massacre executioner as justice minister

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has appointed Alireza Avaie, involved directly in the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran’s Khuzestan Province, to replace Mostafa Pourmohammadi as justice minister in the new cabinet. Pourmohammadi was one of the three members of the massacre 1988 massacre “Death Commission.”

At a Paris press conference held on September 6, 2016, the Iranian Resistance unveiled Avaie’s involvement in the 1988 massacre in Younesco Prison of the city of Dezful, southwest Iran.

Avaie served as Dezful’s public prosecutor from 1979 to 1988. During the 1988 massacre he was serving as the city’s Revolutionary Court prosecutor. Following a fatwa issued by then Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, Avaie was the main official in charge of executions in Younesco Prison. Based on eyewitness reports provided by various former prisoners, Avaie ordered “juvenile prisoners under the age of 18 to be executed in groups of two or three, carried out in an empty field near the prison.”

From 2005 to 2014 Avaie served as chief of the Tehran Province judiciary and then appointed as deputy interior minister. In July 2016 Rouhani had him elevated to the head of the president’s Special Inspections Office.

Avaie was sanctioned by the European Union in October 2011 for his role in human rights violations and direct participation of torturing and massacring political prisoners.

Replacing Pourmohammadi with Avaie, one executioner with another, proves that the entire mullahs’ establishment in Iran, especially its so-called judiciary, is intertwined with executions, killings and the massacre of political prisoners. Other justice ministers prior to Pourmohammadi, such as Morteza Bakhtiari and Ismaeel Shoushtari, were all involved in the 1988 massacre.

While most of the members of Rouhani’s new cabinet are the same previous figures, he was forced to replace Pourmohammadi with another official in charge of 1988 massacre due to the extensive disclosure of Pourmohammadi as a member of Four-Person Death Committee at the domestic and international level as well as broad public hatred against him.

Iranian Resistance and its President-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, while exposing Pourmohammadi’s crime, have called for him to be brought to justice in hundreds of statements, disclosures, speeches and in correspondence with various international organizations.

The appointment of Avaie, who is very close to Rouhani, once again proves the fact that the hands all authorities of the regime, from each faction, are stained with the blood of the Iranian people, especially the political prisoners, and they should be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
August 8, 2017