Geoffrey R. Robertson, QC, Human Rights Barrister, Academic, Author, and Broadcaster, addressed the August 27th international conference “Iran: 1988 Massacre and Genocide – No to impunity, yes to accountability”
What happened in Iranian prison, in that dreadful time in late July and August of 1988. I did an investigation to the Boroumand Foundation some years ago. I interviewed about 50 survivors of those prisoners that time, and I set out my conclusions, firstly as to the facts that thousands of members of the MEK were called before a death committee and once they affirmed their allegiance, they were without any trial, without any defense lawyers, without anything, they were sent by the dead committed to a corridor on the left so called court and they were taken and hanged.
The death committee knew; all members including Raisi knew what was happening; they knew they were sending thousands of prisoners to death. And of course, they were implementing, deliberately knowingly a fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader. Now, what was their knowledge, they knew exactly what was happening in that corridor where they directed these poor prisoners, but the question arises because it is important, this was barbaric, it was the ultimate in brutality.
But what was it in law? Because what it was in law makes a difference. It was a crime; it has been a crime for centuries to kill prisoners without trial, to kill those who have been surrendered or have been in your custody. But the difference is that if it amounts to one particular crime, the crime of genocide, then there is an international convention, which binds the countries of the world, including the United States, it was ratified by president Reagan, to take action.
Now, to punish that genocide, what is it genocide? it is certainly a number of other offensives; it’s murder; it’s persecution; it is various offences under international law, that created the international criminal court. But to punish those offences you need to go through a lot of books, you need to get a resolution from the Security Council to send the case to the international criminal court, and Russia or China or will aproned to beat it. So, it’s important to see, to analyze whether what happened to those thousands of MEK before was properly and lawfully classed as genocide. Now in order be genuine to amount to genocide it has to be the killing of a group on the basis of their race and religion, not on the basis of their politics. We can call that politicize like that it in genocide, because genocide is confined. Stalin killed 3 million gulags, but he wasn’t guilty of genocide because he didn’t kill them to their race or religion. So it is an artificial difference you may think, but there are two reasons for it.
Firstly, the practical reason that the race and religion are the two factors that most usually they make hatred, hatred between neighbors, hatred between different classes of people; they’re particularly volatile, and also race is something you can’t help, religion very often is something you can’t help, so that you can’t change. So, these are the two factors that we have to see whether race hatred or religious hatred was the purpose of killing this group of MEK prisoners. Well, we have to go back to the fatwa itself to see what the purpose was, and the fatwa issued by Khomeini began this way: “Since the treacherous MEK do not believe in Islam and whatever they say stands from hypocrisy, they have become renegades and since they wage war on God.”
So, this is the reason, the principal reason: waging war on God, Mohareb, this is the reason. It goes on, and suggests that for political reasons as well, but MEK ever since its foundation, was distinguished from Khomeini’s group, because of their more fundamentalist view of Islam, and of course the MEK was more liberal, and it’s quite clear as I read this fatwa in translation that it was a religious reason, was the primary reason why these people were killed and Khomeini went on, and this was direction that Raisi, of his own will, deliberately was following: “It is naive to show Mercy to Moharebs, those who wage war on God. The decisiveness of Islam before the enemies of God is among the unquestionable tenets of the Islamic regime.” So here is a bureaucracy imposing the death penalty and goes on, “kill them with revolutionary rage and rancor these enemies of Islam; you must be most ferocious against infidels.”
So I don’t think there is any doubt that the order from the supreme leader, accepted willingly by Raisi; he didn’t have to. Ayatollah Montazeri begged him to stop, but he and the other members of the death committee continued and of their own will to carry on, and ordered to kill on with rage and further on for basically, the reason of religion, because the religion of the MEK held to was different to that, which the theocratic state insisted upon.
And I think it is interesting that when the use of these killings first came up to the United Nations, there was an attempt by the regime to defend them and it was an attempt by the then chief justice Ardebili, and he explained to the UN, he said we are not a secular state, so blasphemy is not permitted. So, he said this was a form of punishing blasphemy and that of course is the crime of the religion or having the wrong religion. So, it seems to me that there is very strong evidence that this is genocide, and the genocide convention was ratified by Iran in 1956. And under the last Democratic regime, what was overthrown by CIA and MI6, but it applies to killing or causing serious mental or physical harm to members of a racial or religious group as such. Now, it wasn’t for being members of a racial group, they were all Iranian; it was for being the members of a religious group as such, religious group that did not accept the fundamentalism of the Ayatollah and the theocracy of this theocratic state, and it viewed as the most heinous of international crimes; it is mass murder by fellow humans, something that they can’t control or bumping of their conscious. The religious group that the Iranian regime intended to destroy were those who held a different view of Islam. And latter of course in September they moved on and killed those who were atheists or communists or left wingers of some form, others in other words who had denounced Khomeini’s view of Islam.
And of course, there is decisions of the courts, that if you are atheist that amounts to killing on grounds of religion even though they have non if that’s the reason. So there is no doubt, it seems to me that there is a case for prosecuting Raisi and the others even current Supreme leader who was president at the time on genocide and that is crime which engages International responsibility and something must be done about it as it was being done by the perpetrators of Srebrenica, was the last declared genocide in International law.
So that is the, I think, arguably the accurate description of what went on if you look at the actual evidence and decide to classify this is genocide and then you have an International Convention, which requires states of the world that have signed up to it, and most states have, to take action against those who perpetrated it, and one of them is the president of Iran.