In July 1988, the supreme leader of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, ordered the execution of thousands of political prisoners. These executions took place in at least 32 cities across Iran and lasted about five months. Trials were not concerned with establishing guilt or innocence, and the executions were carried out without any legal authority. Many prisoners were also tortured. Great care was taken to conceal the executions.
Estimates, including those found in reports by human rights organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, indicate that between 2,800 and 5,000 men, women and children were killed. Other sources, including the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MeK), whose members and supporters featured prominently in the killings, says that 30,000 political prisoners were massacred.
Reportedly, most of those killed were supporters of the MeK. Members of other leftist factions, such as the Fedaian and the Tudeh Party of Iran (Communist Party), were also killed. Various motives have been offered for the executions. One possible motive was that the killings were revenge for the MeK's Operation Forough Javidan, which took place in 1988 on Iran's western borders. However, people from other leftist groups, who had nothing to do with the MeK's attack, were also killed. According to Iran's then-Deputy Supreme Leader Ayatollah Montazeri, officials had been planning the executions for years, using the MeK operation as an excuse to carry them out.
Survivors of the executions have repeatedly called for the killers to face prosecution. Some have described them as "Iran's greatest crime against humanity". They were condemned by Montazeri, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, and several countries.
In November 2021, an Early Day Motion in the UK House of Commons, signed by 47 MPs, stated that the 1988 killings of Iranian political prisoners amounted to ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide, and called on the UK Government to seek a UN Commission of Inquiry.
Further, in 2024, Javaid Rehman, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran (2018–2024), arrived at the preliminary conclusion that the 1988 and 1981 killings were carried out with the genocidal intent of exterminating political opponents and religious minorities.
Background
The Islamic modernist People's Mujahedin of Iran (MeK) had a complicated relationship with Ruhollah Khomeini's government. Their guerilla forces, along with members of the Marxist Fedeyeen, played a key role in overthrowing the monarchy. However, they disagreed with Khomeini's vision about the form the Islamic political system should take. While Khomeini supported a system of rule by Islamic clerics, the MeK supported democracy, women's rights, and a classless society.
After the revolution, as Khomeini's government began suppressing former allies—including liberals, leftists and moderates—the MeK became the regime's most powerful enemy and its primary target. In 1980, Khomeini started criticizing the MeK, calling them elteqati (eclectic), monafeqin (hypocrites), and kafer (unbelievers). He also accused them of being contaminated with gharbzadegi ("the Western plague"). Beginning in February 1980, Hezbollah supporters attacked meeting spots, bookstores, and newsstands owned by the MeK and other leftists. Simultaneously, the government purged members of the opposition—including 20,000 teachers and nearly 8,000 military officers—for being too "Westernized". They also closed MeK offices, banned their newspapers, ordered their leaders' arrests, and prohibited demonstrations.
The crisis reached a critical turning point when Khomeini attacked President Abolhassan Banisadr, an Islamic modernist, former supporter of Khomeini, and ally of the MeK. Banisadr was then impeached by the Islamic Consultative Assembly, causing him to flee the country and call for a "resistance to dictatorship". During the conflict that followed, an "unprecedented reign of terror" was unleashed upon the MeK and similar groups. According to historian Stephanie Cronin, within six months, "2,665 persons, 90 per cent of whom were MeK members, were executed". The MeK retaliated with their own attacks, killing numerous leaders of the Khomeinist Islamic Republic Party. A few months later, they also killed the party's new leader, Mohammad Javad Bahonar. Remnants of the MeK fled the country in fear of further retaliation from Iranian authorities.
In July 1988, 7,000 militants from the National Liberation Army (NLA), the military wing of the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), launched a major military offensive with the goal of capturing key cities such as Kermanshah, with the ultimate objective of toppling the Iranian government. The Iraqi military armed and trained the NLA fighters and provided them with air support. Led by Lieutenant-General Ali Sayad Shirazi, Operation Mersad began on 26 July 1988 and lasted only a few days, whereby the Iranian Armed Forces defeated MeK forces. Iranian leaders have since attempted to shift attention away from the executions by highlighting the MeK's attack, claiming their response was justified against the attackers. However, in 2016, an audio recording posted online purported to reveal a 1988 meeting between then-Deputy-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Montazeri and officials responsible for the mass executions in Tehran. In the recording, Montazeri is heard saying that the Ministry of Intelligence used the MeK's attack as a pretext to carry out the mass killings, which "had been under consideration for several years".
Executions
Khomeini's order
Shortly before the executions began, Khomeini issued "a secret but extraordinary order—some suspect a formal fatwa". The order led to the creation of "special commissions" that were tasked with executing MeK members, who were labeled moharebs (those who war against Allah). Leftists in general were also targeted, and were labeled mortads (apostates from Islam).
In part, the letter reads:
[In the Name of God,
The Compassionate, the Merciful,]
As the treacherous Monafeqin [Hypocrites] do not believe in Islam and what they say is out of deception and hypocrisy, and
As their leaders have confessed that they have become renegades, and
As they are waging war on God, and
As they are engaging in classical warfare in the western, the northern and the southern fronts, and
As they are collaborating with the Ba'ath Party of Iraq and spying for Saddam against our Muslim nation, and
As they are tied to the World Arrogance, and in light of their cowardly blows to the Islamic Republic since its inception,
It is decreed that those who are in prison throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for the Monafeqin [Hypocrites] are waging war on God and are condemned to execution.
Lockdown
According to a report by Kaveh Sharooz, in late 1987 and early 1988, prison officials started "re-questioning" prisoners and grouping them based on political affiliation and sentence length.
On 19 July 1988, Iranian authorities closed several major prisons, preventing all visits and phone calls and refusing to accept letters, care packages, or medicine from families. Courts went on an unscheduled holiday to prevent them from finding out what happened to their imprisoned relatives. Relatives of prisoners were also forbidden from congregating outside the prison gates.
Inside the prisons, cell blocks were isolated from each other and cleared of radios and televisions. All shared spaces—including classrooms, work areas, and medical rooms—were closed. Inmates were confined to their cells. Prison employees were forbidden from speaking to inmates. One prisoner made his own radio to hear news from outside, but found nothing about the lockdown was being reported.
Administration
The executions began that month, in July 1988. They were carried out by Iranian officials who later held high-ranking positions in the government. According to historian Ervand Abrahamian, in his book Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, a 16-member commission oversaw the executions in Tehran. The commission included various authorities from key parts of the Islamic government: Khomeini, the president, the chief prosecutor, the Revolutionary Tribunals, the Justice and Intelligence ministries, and officials from Evin and Gohardasht prisons, where the executions took place. The chair of the commission was Ayatollah Morteza Eshraqi, who was assisted by Hojatt al-Islam, Hossein-Ali Nayyeri, and Ali Mobasheri. The commission traveled by helicopter between Evin and Gohardasht prisons. Similar commissions were set up outside of Tehran, but less is known about them.
Another account of how the executions were carried out, given by Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and supported by Abrahamian in a 2017 interview, says they were administered by a "four-man commission", known as the "death committee". The committee included judge Hossein-Ali Nayyeri, Tehran Prosecutor Eshraqi, deputy prosecutor general Ebrahim Raisi, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who represented the Intelligence Ministry at Evin Prison. Raisi later campaigned for president of Iran in 2017 as a hard-line conservative. He faced criticism over his part in executions but later won the presidency on his second attempt in 2021. His role earned him a reputation as a "hanging judge", like Sadegh Khalkhali before him. It also earned him his nickname: 'Butcher of Tehran'. Amnesty International presented evidence that linked several Iranian officials to participation in the massacre. Among them were Alireza Avayi, who allegedly served on the panel in Dezful, Raisi, who allegedly served on the panel in Tehran, Pourmohammadi, and others.
Most of the prisoners executed were there for nonviolent activities like distributing newspapers and leaflets, joining protests, or raising money for the opposition. Some were imprisoned for holding outlawed political views. Others were executed because of their religious views—either because they were atheists or for following different forms of Islam. They were tried before they were executed, but these trials were unrelated to the crimes they were imprisoned for. Due to the high number of prisoners facing execution, they were placed onto forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes every 30 minutes. The executions were not sanctioned by Iranian law, violated international law, and are now considered a crime against humanity.
MeK executions
The Tehran commission began by questioning MeK members and penitents, asking if they would denounce the MeK on camera, help the government hunt down MeK members, name secret sympathizers, identify false penitents, or walk through enemy minefields. According to Abrahamian, the questions were designed to "tax to the utmost the victim's sense of decency, honour, and self-respect". Prisoners who gave wrong answers were moved to a "special room" to be executed. Alleged MeK affiliates, including children as young as 13, were hanged from cranes following Khomeini's orders. Prisoners were told that this interrogation process was not a trial, but rather a "process for initiating a general amnesty and [to separate] Muslims from non-Muslims". Many prisoners believed that they would be imminently set free. One who survived thought he was being interviewed for release during upcoming peace celebrations.
Executions of leftists
After 27 August, the commission turned its attention to leftist prisoners, including members of the Tudeh Party of Iran, Majority and Minority Fedayi, other Fedayi factions, Kumaleh, Rah-e Kargar, and Peykar. Like the MeK affiliates, they were told that they were not in danger and were questioned about their religious beliefs and practices. Prisoners were told that officials were asking these questions to separate practicing Muslims from non-practicing ones. However, the true purpose was to identify possible apostates, who would then be hanged alongside other condemned moharebs.
Some prisoners, who were saved from execution by answering the questions "properly", shared information with other inmates about what they were asked. One leftist prisoner, who had once attended seminary, understood the religious meaning behind the questions and warned others by knocking messages on the prison walls in morse code. The officials asked if the prisoners' fathers prayed, fasted, and read the Quran. If they had not been raised in traditional Muslim homes and "exposed to true Islam", they could not be labeled apostates. However, the sons of devout men could be. Refusing to answer the questions because of privacy concerns was also often seen as proof of apostasy.
This shocked the prisoners. One commented: "In previous years, they wanted us to confess to spying. In 1988, they wanted us to convert to Islam". There was no correlation between the length of a prisoner's sentence and the likelihood that they would be executed. The first leftists to appear before the commission had shorter sentences, with no warning of what would happen to them.
Treatment of women
Female MeK members faced the same harsh treatment as their male counterparts, with most being hanged as "armed enemies of Allah". However, for apostasy, women received lighter punishments than men. This was because, according to the commission's interpretation of Islamic law, women were not fully responsible for their actions and "could be given discretionary punishments to mend their ways and obey male superiors".
Leftist women, including those raised as practicing Muslims, were given another "opportunity" to recant their "apostasy". Many were given five lashes daily: one for each missed prayer. This was half the punishment men received. While many women eventually agreed to pray, some went on hunger strike, in some cases refusing both food and water. One woman died after 22 days and 550 lashes. Officials certified her death as a suicide, because it was "she who had made the decision not to pray".