Open this photo in gallery
Iraj Mesdaghi first encountered Iran’s new president-elect in 1988, when he was in prison in Iran and Ebrahim Raisi was a member of what was known the Death Commission that executed thousands.
Felix Odell/The Globe and Mail
Beginning in July, 1988, thousands of political prisoners in Iran were taken from their cells and brought before a panel of judges, who asked them a series of questions such as: Are you a Muslim? Do you pray? Are you willing to walk through a minefield to assist the army of the Islamic Republic?
Anyone who gave the wrong answer under interrogation was handed a pen and paper and told to write their last will and testament. At least 5,000 political dissidents – some of them leftists, many others affiliated with a militia known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran – were executed after being interviewed by a panel of judges, who became known as the “Death Commission. "
The victims were hung from cranes erected in a parking lot behind Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, or in what inmates called “the amphitheatre” of Gohardasht prison, on the outskirts of the capital. Some say the real number of those killed in the prison massacre was closer to 30,000.
This week, Ebrahim Raisi, who as deputy prosecutor for Tehran was a member of the four-person Death Commission in 1988, became the president-elect of Iran. Many believe he is being prepared to succeed the aging Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the country’s Supreme Leader, potentially putting him in a position to chart the country’s direction for decades to come.
“Whenever they went to execute a group of 10 or 12 or 15 prisoners, all the members of the Death Commission, including Raisi, went to the amphitheatre and witnessed. And then they made a party. They came to our cells with cake and cookies and asked us to join their celebration,” said Iraj Mesdaghi, who spent 10 days in what was known as “death corridor” of Gohardasht prison, before he was released after vowing to end all of his political activities.
Mr. Mesdaghi now lives in Sweden, where he is a key witness in a landmark trial against Hamid Nouri, another Iranian official who allegedly took part in the 1988 massacre. Mr. Mesdaghi told The Globe and Mail that he was interrogated four times in Gohardasht by the panel of judges that included Mr. Raisi. He says Mr. Raisi declared that he wanted to rid Iran of all its political prisoners, and that the president-elect will be implicated by the evidence he and others intend to give to the Swedish court.
In his current post as the country’s Chief Justice, Mr. Raisi also played a leading role in Iran’s investigation into last year’s shooting down of Ukrainian Airlines flight 752, which was struck by two missiles shortly after taking off from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. Though 138 of the victims were either citizens of or travelling to Canada, Iran refused to give Canadian investigators full access to the crash site, and victims’ families were outraged by the Iranian investigation’s conclusion that the disaster was caused by human error.
Open this photo in gallery
Iran's new President-elect Ebrahim Raisi waves at the conclusion of his news conference in Tehran, Iran.
Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press
The Canadian government’s forensic report, published on Thursday, found that Iran had not given “credible explanation of how and why” a branch of its military had shot down the passenger plane. A full accounting of what happened seems even more unlikely after Mr. Raisi’s elevation to the presidency.
“I don’t know how the international community will deal with this guy,” Mr. Mesdaghi said in a telephone interview. “Can he come to international organizations? The United Nations? Can he visit other countries? How?”
It’s a question that U.S. President Joe Biden, among others, will soon have to answer. Mr. Biden’s administration is in the midst of sensitive negotiations regarding the future of a 2015 deal that saw the U.S. and other countries agree to lift longstanding economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for curbs on the country’s nuclear program.
Story continues below advertisement
Mr. Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew the U.S. from the pact in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions. Mr. Biden’s administration has vowed to re-join the deal, but now faces an informal deadline of August, when Mr. Raisi officially succeeds the more reform-minded President Hassan Rouhani. “I have a hard time imagining that if a deal is not restored before August that Raisi will be able to make the compromises that Rouhani shied away from,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
While the U.S, has sought to broaden the nuclear pact to include restrictions on Iran’s missile-building program, Mr. Raisi said in his first public remarks after winning the election that the U.S. should lift sanctions before Iran is required to take any steps. Asked if he would be willing to meet Mr. Biden once sanctions were lifted, Mr. Raisi answered: “No.”
Adding to the complexity of the negotiations, Mr. Raisi has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2019 for his alleged oversight of human-rights abuses – including the execution of juveniles and the punishment of prisoners by amputation – committed by Iran’s judiciary.
That Mr. Raisi could rise from the Death Committee to become the head of Iran’s government is telling. So too is the effort that that Ayatollah Khamenei – the country’s ultimate authority – and his allies put into ensuring Mr. Raisi’s victory in the June 18 presidential election.
Elections in Iran are always carefully managed affairs, with Ayatollah Khamenei and his coterie filtering candidates based on their perceived loyalty to the regime before allowing the public to choose between the small number who pass muster.
But even by those standards, the regime went to unusual lengths to ensure voters would have little option but to back Mr. Raisi. Of more than 600 people who put their names forward as candidates for president, only seven were approved by the powerful Guardian Council, three of whom dropped out before election day.
The anxiety of the moment is seen as connected to the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei is now 82 years old and rumoured to be in deteriorating health. There’s speculation inside and outside Iran that by installing the 60-year-old Mr. Raisi in the presidency, the Supreme Leader is effectively naming his own successor.
By ushering Mr. Raisi into the presidency, Ayatollah Khamenei may also be seeking to bring an end to the long-running struggle between the regime’s hardliners and pragmatists such as Mr. Rouhani, with the latter faction seeking improved relations with the West.
“What makes Raisi unique is that he owes everything he has to the Supreme Leader. He is completely loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei,” Mr. Vaez said. “The system is really now at a stage where it can’t afford a dysfunctional government.”
If Mr. Raisi is on a course to become Iran’s next Supreme Leader, it’s unclear that a majority of Iranians support the idea. Official figures show only 48.8 per cent of voters cast ballots on June 18. Mr. Raisi won with a clear-cut 62 per cent, nearly 15 per cent of those who did vote spoiled their ballots.
“It was a protest vote against the candidates, against the political system,” said Sanam Vakil, an Iran expert at Chatham House, a London think tank. “There’s clear frustration that the people are no longer being considered as important to this process.”
Mr. Raisi was born into a devout Shia Muslim family in the northeastern city of Mashhad, and received a religious education at a seminary in the holy city of Qom. Since his time on the Death Commission, he has risen steadily through the ranks of the judiciary. He was named the country’s prosecutor-general in 2014 and chief justice five years later.
Asked this week about his role in the 1988 massacre, Mr. Raisi told reporters in Tehran that “if a judge, a prosecutor has defended the security of the people, he should be praised.”
Mr. Raisi later played a role in a series of crackdowns on dissent, including the violent suppression of anti-government protests in both 2009 and 2019.
Open this photo in gallery
Firuz Naimi (on far right) in Hamadan prison shortly before his execution in June 1981. Iran’s new president-elect Ebrahim Raisi was the regional prosecutor at the time, and oversaw a crackdown on followers of the Baha'i faith
Payam Akhavan, an Iranian-born Canadian lawyer who specializes in prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity, said Mr. Raisi’s rise “says something about the nature of the regime.” He said the 1988 massacre had become “Iran’s Srebrenica – the one massacre that epitomizes that decade of violence.”
Mr. Akhavan said his own uncle, Firuz Naimi, was tortured to death in a 1981 crackdown on followers of the Bahai faith that was overseen by Mr. Raisi, who was regional prosecutor at the time. He said Mr. Raisi was a “fanatic” willing to do whatever the Supreme Leader told him to do.
“The message [from the election] is ‘we’re here to stay,’” Mr. Akhavan said in an interview. “It’s about the stability of the regime. Continuity. It’s about crushing dissent and all hopes of reform.”