Online news and feature publication of Norway “The Foreigner” on Thursday, 3rd November, 2016 announced: “Iranian resistance spokespersons and others gather in Oslo, Friday, to scrutinize new revelations about the 1988 killings, following is the full text.http://theforeigner.no/
Iranian resistance spokespersons and others gather in Oslo, Friday, to scrutinise new revelations about the 1988 killings.
The conference takes place as the UN General Assembly’s deliberation on a resolution on the situation of human rights in Iran.
It will include information and analysis presented by Norwegian MPs, lawyers, human rights activists, eyewitnesses, and representatives of the Iranian resistance.
Details of the recent discovery of mass graves where political dissidents were secretly buried will also be given.
This information has been collected in recent weeks by eye-witnesses inside Iran, the media advisory issued by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Nordic Countries states as well.
The Foreigner talked with spokesperson Shahin Gobadi about some of the reasons for Friday’s move.
“We came across some new, solid information about the scope and number of Iranian officials that were involved in the massacre in 1988. Some secret mass graves with the bodies of 30,000 political prisoners were recently found in Iran,” he says by phone.
In August this year, an audio file of Ayatollah Khomeini’s former heir, Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, surfaced about the massacre for the first time. It was posted on a website by Montazeri’s supporters. Montazeri died in 2009.
On the audio recording, which is from 15th August 1988, the voice of Montazeri can be heard harshly criticizing members of Tehran’s ‘Death Commission’, which Khomeini appointed.
Death Commissions were formed in the Iranian capital and around the country in more than 70 towns and cities. They consisted of religious judge, a prosecutor, and a representative of the Intelligence Ministry.
According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Nordic Countries, more than 100 Iranian officials have been implicated in the killings. These were based on a fatwa decreed by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder.
“There are eyewitnesses who lost direct relatives in the wholesale killings. What we have established is that many who were involved in the mass slaughter currently hold high positions in the regime in Iran,” Council spokesperson Shahin Gobadi adds.
The Council is now demanding that Norway take the lead on a UN inquiry into these liquidations.
“There’s never been any international investigation on this. The Iranian regime has kept the lid on the massacre for almost three decades. The issue has now become a very public one in Iran, and I think it’s very much time that the UN conducted an inquiry,” he says.
Mr Gobadi also remarks that some of the reasons for asking Norway rather than other Nordic countries to do this include its leading position on human rights, and that it is very active on civil rights the world over.
“Norway gives a lot of significance to human rights,” he explains, “and Iran is the world’s number one executioner.”
