THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED ON JUNE 10, 2024
The call for international investigations into the 1988 massacre has gained significant support in recent years. As the justice-seeking campaign to hold the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre accountable expands, it is crucial to familiarize ourselves with the individuals responsible for this crime against humanity. One such criminal is Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a former Interior and Justice Minister. Pourmohammadi was a member of Tehran’s “death commission,” which executed thousands of political prisoners during the 1988 massacre.
Who is Mostafa Pourmohammadi?
- Full Name: Mustafa Pourmohammadi
- Date of Birth: 1959
- Place of Birth: Qom, Iran
- Education: Advanced studies in Jurisprudence and Principles
- Current Position: Advisor to the Office of the Supreme Leader and Head of the Political and Social Affairs Group in the Supreme Leader’s Office
Political and Party Affiliations:
- Disciple of Mesbah Yazdi: Part of the Haqqani School, known for its influence over parallel security institutions and its aggressive stance against independent scholars and intellectuals. Other notable figures from this school include current Chief Justice Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, head of the 41st branch of the Supreme Court Ali Razini, former MOIS Chief Mohammad-Mehdi Reyshahri, former MOIS Chief Ali Fallahian, and former Deputy Prosecutor of the Islamic Revolution in the Ministry of Information and Intelligence Ruhollah Hosseinian.
- Member of the Coordination Council of Revolutionary Forces (February 17, 2005): Along with five others (Khamenei’s senior advisor Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Tehran City Council Chair Mehdi Chamran, Kayhan Daily editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari, Khamenei’s representative in the Martyrs Foundation Mohammad-Hassan Rahimian, and former Resalat Daily editor-in-chief Morteza Nabavi), expanded the decision-making body to 11 members.
- Imam Sadiq University: Teaches Islamic Political Studies.
Mostafa Pourmohammadi’s dark past and present
Pourmohammadi was born in Qom in 1959. He attended the seminary from an early age. Before Iran’s 1979 revolution, he was a student at Haqqani school in Qom, where most of the regime’s top officials and clerics studied.
Months after the 1979 revolution, Pourmohammadi was dispatched to Khuzestan, southwest Iran, as the province’s “Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court.” According to eyewitnesses, Mostafa Pourmohammadi sentenced more than 300 prisoners to death in Bandar Abbas Prison, including 16- and 17-year-olds. Pourmohammadi was only 20 years of age at that time.
From the inception of the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) in 1983, Mostafa Pourmohammadi was the deputy to Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri, the first Minister of Intelligence. He also held the positions of deputy and head of the Foreign Intelligence Division under the leadership of Ali Fallahian and Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi in the 1990s. Under former regime president Mohammad Khatami, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Mostafa Pourmohammadi as one of the officials in the Special Office of Intelligence and Security of the Supreme Leader.
Pourmohammadi’s positions
Mostafa Pourmohammadi has held important judicial and security positions since the establishment of the Iranian regime, including:
• Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Courts in the provinces of Khuzestan, Hormozgan, and Khorasan from 1979 to 1986
• Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Courts in the west of the country from 1986 to 1987
• Advisor to the Minister of Information from 1987 to 1989
• Deputy Minister of Intelligence from 1989 to 1990
• Head of Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) from 1990 to 1997
• Head of Political and Social Affairs of the Supreme Leader since 2001
• Minister of Interior in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration from 2005-2008
• Head of the National Inspection Organization from August 2002 to May 2008
• Minister of Justice in Hassan Rouhani’s administration from August 2013 to August 2017
• Advisor to the Head of the Judiciary from 31 August 2017 until now
Pourmohammadi’s dark record of human rights
While acting as the prosecutor of the revolutionary courts in several provinces, Pourmohammadi ordered, oversaw, and participated in the systematic purge of dissidents.
In September 1981, Mostafa Pourmohammadi was transferred from Bandar Abbas to Mashhad and became the Attorney General of Khorasan Province.
In the first week of January 1981, several young women were executed in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad. Immediately after the executions, some of the families of the executed girls told their relatives that their daughters had been raped before the executions. Based on the evidence obtained from some relatives, three executed girls, Sima Motalebi, Mandana, and Mitra Mojavarian, were tried and sentenced to death in a few minutes without a lawyer.
A few days after the news of the execution of Mandana and Mitra Mojavarian was announced, a prison guard went to their houses and gave flowers and sweets, saying that the Revolutionary Guards had married their daughters before the execution. Sima also wrote on her leg that “I was raped.”
According to the testimony of two political prisoners, one of whom was tried in September 1981 and the other in January 1981, from September to the end of January, Ali Razini was the Sharia judge. He issued all execution orders for young women. Mostafa Pourmohammadi, as the Revolutionary Prosecutor of the province, supervised all these executions. Pourmohammadi’s human rights abuses reached their peak in the summer of 1988.
Pourmohammadi and the 1988 massacre
Pourmohammadi played a key role during the 1988 massacre of Iranian political prisoners. Over 30,000 political prisoners were executed in a matter of months. Most of the victims were members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
Hossain-Ali Montazeri, then-successor of Ruhollah Khomeini, revealed that Pourmohammadi was “the representative of the MOIS in charge of questioning prisoners in Evin Prison” during the 1988 massacre. Montazeri described Pourmohammadi as one of the “central figures” in the massacre.
Montazeri stated that whenever a decree prohibiting the execution of girls was issued, Pourmohammad would counter by citing Khomeini’s fatwa regarding the Mojahedin.
Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1988, ordering regime authorities to execute dissidents, particularly supporters and members of the MEK. On August 28, 2016, Pourmohammadi was quoted by the state-run Tasnim news agency, stating, “God commanded to show no mercy to the nonbelievers because they will not show mercy to you either. There should be no mercy to the [MEK] because if they could, they would spill your blood, which they did. We are proud to have carried out God’s commandment regarding the [MEK] and to have stood with strength and fought against the enemies of God and the people.”
On 24 July 2019, Pourmohammadi once again defended the 1988 massacre and stated that newly captured MEK activists would face capital punishment. He said, “I think the issue of the MEK is clear. We have no ambiguity about the MEK. We are at a time of war. Now is not the time for talk. Now is the time to fight them. Now is the time to subdue them. Now is the time to conduct prosecutions.”
During an exclusive interview on mass executions in the 1980s, he said, “We have not yet settled the score with the MEK. We will discuss these matters after we eliminate them. We are not joking.”
Pourmohammadi continued his human rights abuses in the following years by holding top positions in the regime’s judiciary and MOIS. He served as the Minister of Justice under Hassan Rouhani. During Rouhani’s tenure, over 4,000 people were executed. In addition to his role in domestic human rights violations, Pourmohammadi also played a key role in assassinating dissidents abroad for the MOIS.
Pourmohammadi in the MOIS
Mostafa Pourmohammadi joined the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) in 1987 under then-intelligence minister Mohammad Rieshahri. At the age of 29, under the direction of Ali Fallahian, he was appointed director of the ministry’s counterintelligence directorate. From 1997 to 1998, Pourmohammadi served as the director of the ministry’s foreign directorate.
During this period, he oversaw the assassinations of numerous dissidents, including Dr. Abdolrahman Ghassemlou, Secretary-General of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI); Dr. Kazem Rajavi, the NCRI Representative in Switzerland; Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a prominent Iranian showman; and Sadegh Sharafkandi, Ghassemlou’s successor in the KDPI.
In 1998, at least 120 prominent Iranian political commentators, writers, and intellectuals were assassinated inside Iran. Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, prominent political activists and leaders of the Nation of Iran Party, as well as Majid Sharif, Mohammad Mokhtari, and Mohammad Jafar Pooyandeh, well-known dissident writers and journalists, were murdered by the MOIS. As one of the MOIS’s top officials, Pourmohammadi was involved in these killings, which became known as “the Chain Murders.”
Pourmohammadi garnered significant notoriety and disapproval. In 1999, when he expressed intentions to run for parliament from Qom, even state officials protested against his candidacy, ultimately leading him to withdraw.
In June 2000, Pourmohammadi commented on the closure of newspapers, expressing that while shutting down newspapers was not an ideal approach, he questioned if there were any viable alternatives.
On September 18, 2000, Mohammad Khatami referred to the MOIS “therapeutic killing” project and mentioned that Akbar Ganji, one of the individuals who uncovered the “darkroom of ghosts,” was being tried for exposing the roles of former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian and his deputies Saeed Emami and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, as well as those issuing fatwas for the murders, such as Mohseni Ejei.
Pourmohammadi was one of the main plaintiffs against Emadeddin Baghi, one of the founders of the IRGC a former member of the editorial board of the now-banned newspaper Fath, who was sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
Pourmohammadi explained his complaint against Emadeddin Baghi, stating, “Regarding the chain murders, which were extensively discussed in newspapers, my name and those of some colleagues were mentioned in articles. However, the situation escalated when the defendant, Baghi, explicitly named me in a specific instance. In an article titled ‘Decoding the Black Box of Chain Murders’ published on January 30, 2000, in Fath newspaper, Baghi mentioned the murder of Mrs. Fakhr ul-Sadat Burqai, who happened to be my cousin’s wife, claiming it was among the chain murders and that I was involved. Baghi alleged that the late Borghei possessed certain information, leading to her murder. According to him, her father was advised not to pursue the case due to the powerful opposition, and the forensic doctor delayed issuing a report. If Baghi asserts that this murder was political and part of the chain murders, he should provide evidence and documentation. It’s as if our professional duty was merely to kill a chaste, virtuous, and knowledgeable woman. Baghi’s article appears to aim at disturbing public opinion.”
Mostafa Pourmohammadi played a key role within the primary team responsible for initiating judicial proceedings against government critics and dissidents. This team’s mandate included the apprehension and interrogation of detainees.
In his capacity as Deputy Minister of Intelligence, Pourmohammadi was involved in a manipulated report titled “New Information on the Chain Murders,” which essentially absolved all the defendants of guilt. The report shifted the blame onto a single individual, Mostafa Kazemi Mousavi, portraying him as the primary perpetrator. Pourmohammadi’s report went further to suggest that Mousavi enjoyed the trust of former President Mohammad Khatami, thereby exonerating other prominent figures, such as Saeed Emami, while implicating a rival faction. In an interview in 2019, Pourmohammadi reiterated these statements once more.
Despite widespread accusations regarding Pourmohammadi’s alleged involvement in serial murders and massacres, rumors circulated suggesting that Khamenei had sidelined him from his office. However, it became evident in 2003 that Pourmohammadi remained actively engaged in “his official duties.”
Due to his significant notoriety within the Iranian regime, Pourmohammadi has consistently been a subject of concern for state officials, leading to a cautious and often contradictory approach in dealing with him. In 2015, he ran for the Assembly of Experts from Alborz Province but his qualification was not approved by the Guardian Council.
During the March 1 elections for the Assembly of Experts, Pourmohammadi nominated himself, only to have his eligibility rejected by the Guardian Council. He lodged a complaint, and after three days, his complaint was positively addressed, and his eligibility was confirmed by the Guardian Council.
