NCRI – The Representative office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Nordic Countries announced today that on Friday, 11 AM, it will be holding a press conference in Oslo to present the Nordic government with new information about Iran’s massacre of political prisoners in 1988. The event will coincide with the United Nation’s deliberation on an annual resolution condemning the Iranian regime’s ongoing human rights violations.
In August, an audio recording was released on the website of the late Iranian cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had been poised to take over for Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini before being ousted from the regime over his opposition to the massacre and related abuses. In the recording, dating to mid-August of 1988, Montazeri decried participants in the massacre for committing “the greatest crime of the Islamic Republic.” He also detailed some of the worst aspects of the massacre, including executions of teenagers and pregnant women.
Montazeri’s son was quickly charged with spreading propaganda after his release of his father’s recording. But the Iranian government was unable to prevent the recording from spreading after its initial release, and the effect has been unprecedented awareness and discussion of the nearly three-decade old massacre throughout Iranian society.
It is this newfound publicity that has been credited with the acquisition of new information by the Iranian resistance, through its social networks in Iran and its sources within the clerical regime. As more people have come forward to share victims’ stories or to defend their own records as officials in the regime at the time of the massacre, the NCRI has reportedly identified dozens of individuals who played significant roles in promoting and carrying out the massacre. The Friday’s press conference will identify these individuals who remain in high-ranking positions within the regime and its affiliated institutions.
The conference will also identify the apparent locations of a number of newly discovered mass graves, the exhumation of which could help to establish a complete account of the execution of 30,000 political prisoners, primarily activists of the People’s Mojahedin organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).