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A Preliminary Report on the 1988 Massacre of Iran's Political Prisoners

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A Preliminary Report on the 1988 Massacre of Iran's Political Prisoners With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor: A Preliminary Report on the 1988 Massacre of Iran's Political Prisoners Kaveh Shahrooz* We must establish incredible events by credible evidence., - Justice Robert Jackson INTRODUCTION In December 2005, Human Rights Watch ("HRW") released a fifteen- page Briefing Paper alleging that Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, Iran's newest Minister of Interior, played a central role in the 1988 (1367 in the Iranian calendar) massacre of political prisoners in Iran. 2 Without much elabora- tion, HRW's publication further alleged that the executions constitute "a crime against humanity under international law." 3 This HRW statement and the creation of new human rights organizations focusing exclusively on the Iranian government's human rights record 4 are hopeful signs of a bur- geoning interest in a thorough investigation of the 1988 prison massacre. This paper attempts to contribute to such a project by compiling key infor- mation about the mass killing and providing preliminary legal analysis. This essay also highlights some of the problems that human rights activists will face in pursuing the case. * J.D., Harvard Law School, 2006. A version of this Article was presented at the 2006 Iran Future Prospects Conference at Stanford University. I thank the conference participants and organizers, particu- larly Dr. Abbas Milani, for their insight. The encouragement I have received from Catherine Skulan, Amy Chen, Orkideh Behrouzan, Pouria Lotfi, Payam Akhavan, Shahrzad Mojab, and Ryan Goodman helped me to recognize the urgency of this research and the importance of publishing the final product. For providing editorial suggestions that improved this piece immeasurably, I thank Amanda Perwin, Brandon Weiss, Stacy Humes-Schulz, and the staff of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. As always, I owe endless gratitude to Maral Nadjafi. All errors herein are mine alone. This Article is dedicated to the memory of Mehrdad Ashtari, who was executed at the age of 28 at Gohar-Dasht prison, presumably on August 6, 1988. 1. JUSTICE ROBERT JACKSON, REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON ATROCITIES AND WAR CRIMES, June 7, 1945, available at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jackOl.htm. 2. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, MINISTERS OF MURDER: IRAN'S NEW SECURITY CABINET 3 (2005), available at http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/iran1205/iran1205.pdf (hereinafter MINISTERS OF MURDER]. 3. Id. 4. See, e.g., Arielle Levin Becker, Thinking of Home and Human Rights, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 9, 2005, at 14CN (describing the establishment of the New Haven-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center). Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 20 The gross violations of human rights in Iran since the 1979 Revolution have been documented in great detail. However, for reasons that remain largely unexplored, 5 and are well beyond the scope of this paper, the Iranian government has been successful in keeping one of its worst atrocities a se- cret from the international community. During the summer of 1988, shortly after accepting a cease-fire in its eight-year war with Iraq, the Ira- nian government established informal commissions to re-try political pris- oners across the country, ordering the immediate execution of thousands found guilty at these "trials." The secret executions were carried out with a speed and ferocity that surpassed even the reign of terror immediately fol- lowing the Iranian Revolution. And yet "[tlhe curtain of secrecy" sur- rounding these executions was so effective "that no Western journalist 6 heard of it and no Western academic discussed it. They still have not." 5. An unlikely and unsatisfying explanation is provided by Joe Stork, HRW's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director: "At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, there was a certain interest in the part of the major powers not to stir up the pot and antagonize Iran." Veronique Mistiaen, Memories of a Slaughter in Iran, TORONTO STAR, Sept. 5, 2004, at F5. Though Stork may be right in his assessment of why "major powers" did not pursue the issue, his explanation reveals little about why human rights organizations, including his own, have been largely silent on what is arguably the single largest govern- ment-sponsored massacre of citizens in contemporary Iranian history. For example, HRW's MINISTERS OF MURDER, supra note 2, is the only HRW publication to refer to the 1988 massacre. Even there, HRW does not analyze the gruesome and systematic killing in any depth. A more plausible explanation for the reluctance of human rights organizations to pursue the story may be the general unpopularity of the political party whose members were the primary victims of the massacre. The Sazman-e Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran (the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran) ("Mojahedin") enjoyed immense popular sup- port in the early 1980s as Iran's most powerful opposition group. The party's popularity then declined rapidly as a result of the disastrous political decision to establish military camps in Iraq during the Iran- Iraq war, the foolhardy military actions taken against the Iranian government, the popular belief (en- couraged by the Iranian government's propaganda) that the organization engaged in terrorist actions against civilians, and the cult of personality developed around the Mojahedin's leaders. See ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN, THE IRANIAN MOJAHEDIN 243-61 (1989); HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, No EXIT: HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES INSIDE THE MKO CAMPS 5-11 (2005), available at http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ iran0505/iran0505.pdf; Human Rights Watch, Statement on Responses to Human Rights Watch Re- port on Abuses by the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) (Feb. 15, 2006), http://hrw.org/mideast/ pdf/iran021506.pdf; see also Elizabeth Rubin, The Cult of Rajavi, N.Y. TIMES (MAG.), July 13, 2003, at 26: Meanwhile, inside Iran, the street protesters risking their lives and disappearing inside the regime's prisons consider the Mujahedeen a plague-as toxic, if not more so, than the ruling clerics. After all, the Rajavis sold out their fellow Iranians to Saddam Hussein, trading intel- ligence about their home country for a place to house their Marxist-Islamist Rajavi sect. While Mujahedeen press releases were pouring out last month, taking undue credit for the nightly demonstrations, many antigovernment Iranians were rejoicing over the arrest of Maryam Rajavi and wondering where Massoud was hiding and why he, too, hadn't been apprehended. This past winter in Iran, when such a popular outburst among students and others was still just a dream, if you mentioned the Mujahedeen, those who knew and remembered the group laughed at the notion of it spearheading a democracy movement. Instead, they said, the Rajavis, given the chance, would have been the Pol Pot of Iran. 6. ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN, TORTURED CONFESSIONS: PRISONS AND PUBLC RECANTATIONS IN MOD- ERN IRAN 210 (1999). Although several years have passed since the publication of Professor Abrahamian's chapter on the 1988 killings, Western journalists and academics have still not produced much writing and research on the slaughter. In producing this Article, this author estimates that he has found no more than ten or fifteen English-language news reports of the massacre and only a handful of book chapters addressing the topic. 2007 / With Revolutionary Rage and Rancor 229 This Article is an advocacy document intended to familiarize human rights defenders with the 1988 case and to encourage them to begin an in- depth investigation. All facts collected for this retelling of the 1988 story are available in the public domain, though their gathering has required substantial effort. The sources include memoirs of political figures, memoirs by prisoners, a handful of human rights reports, brief statements by United Nations ("U.N.") Special Representatives, scholarly essays, and sporadic news reports of varying quality and credibility from the political groups whose members faced execution in Iranian prisons. For the purposes of this Article, no witnesses, survivors, family members, or government officials have been interviewed. Undoubtedly, any future investigation of the 1988 massacre will require locating and interviewing the (few) survivors of the massacre and the (numerous) bereaved family members, both inside and outside Iran. However, as I will discuss later, a meaningful legal investiga- tion of the 1988 crimes cannot rest on such interviews alone. 7 A thorough legal analysis will also require inside knowledge about Iran's chain of com- mand so as to answer central questions about individual responsibility within the governmental structure. Part I of this Article attempts to present a coherent narrative of the bru- tality unleashed in Iran during the summer of 1988, and briefly discusses some of the possible motivations behind the executions. Although accurate reporting on a secret massacre of nearly two decades ago is difficult, the recent publication of memoirs by former political prisoners and by Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri has greatly facilitated the task of investi- gating the 1988 killing. The dissident Ayatollah Montazeri-Ayatollah Khomeini's designated successor prior to a well-publicized forced resigna- tion and house arrest (likely motivated by his opposition to the 1988 mas- sacre)8-provides a wealth of details and documents about the massacre. Montazeri's information is invaluable in reconstructing what occurred in Iranian prisons in 1988. In Part II, I apply settled customary international law to show that the evidence strongly supports HRW's categorization of the 1988 massacre as a crime against humanity. In this regard, I also discuss the relevance of the legal doctrines surrounding individual criminal responsibility and com- mand responsibility. Finally, Part III outlines some problems human rights defenders will face in investigating the executions and explores the reasons 7. See infra Part III. 8. IranianAuthorities Said to be 'Jamming" Dissident Ayatollah's Website, BBC WORLDWIDE MONITOR- ING, Dec. 24, 2000 ("A chapter, one of the most important of the memoir's, addresses the underlying reasons for Montazeri's fallout with his mentor and friend Khomeyni and the run-up to his ouster.
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