Those that like to contemplate the worst strategy to die – for Montaigne, it was to be hanged on piano wire; for Orwell, to be eaten by rats – needn’t rack their creativeness any longer. It was allegedly inflicted on younger ladies in Evin jail and elsewhere in Iran in 1988. First got here the demise sentence, then, in keeping with some accounts, compelled marriage and rape simply earlier than being hanged or shot, in an effort to deny them the quick monitor to heaven accorded to virgins within the Mullahs’ warped theology. After I investigated these jail massacres some years in the past, I heard of this horrific allegation however dismissed it for lack of proof. However I consider there’s good motive to return to them now.
Many hundreds of imprisoned oppositionists had been killed at the moment by order (a fatwa) of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Many had been college students, sentenced years earlier than for minor political crimes like taking part in demonstrations or handing out leaflets. Ebrahim Raisi, now president of Iran, is believed to have sat on a “demise committee”, which sentenced them to demise with out a trial as “mohareb” (enemies of God) for allegiance to teams that opposed the state or its faith. The entire episode displays the contempt that ladies nonetheless face in Iran, as its vicious morality police have just lately demonstrated.
There can’t be a lot doubt that Raisi knew of those stomach-turning practices. Data may also be imputed to Ali Khamenei, president on the time and now Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. After all, this was simply the worst a part of a colossal crime towards humanity as many hundreds of political prisoners had been put to demise. Their our bodies had been allegedly stacked in refrigerated lorries and buried secretly in a mass grave in Tehran’s cemeteries, the place even right this moment mother and father and family of the victims should not in a position to mourn them.
Iran has gone to extraordinary lengths to cowl up the crime. When some information of it leaked on the time, a naïve worldwide company rapporteur was welcomed to Evin with a brass band, the place schooled prisoners pretended they had been well-treated. It was solely years later, with the publication of the diaries of a senior Mullah who reprimanded the demise committee throughout their work at Evin, that the reality started to return out, however not in regards to the destiny of the ladies who had been allegedly raped earlier than execution. The diaries additionally included a duplicate of the cruel fatwa issued by the Ayatollah in fury at having to signal a truce within the battle with Iraq.
There’s little prospect of bringing the perpetrators to justice whereas the Mullahs, whose merciless sexist beliefs contributed to the intolerable remedy of the feminine prisoners, stay in energy. One perpetrator who ventured abroad was caught in Sweden and final 12 months sentenced to life imprisonment. Little doubt the Iranians are on the lookout for a Swede they will falsely accuse of espionage in an effort to swap for him. Belgium just lately succumbed to Iranian blackmail and freed a diplomat sentenced to twenty years for planning a thwarted bomb attack towards an exiled Iranian opposition group. He was swapped for a Belgian assist employee, sentenced in Iran for “espionage”.
Given the impunity of the Mullahs, the very best that may be finished is to reveal the extent of their crimes as a sign of the barbarity of which their authorities is succesful – if, for instance, they possess a nuclear bomb. We all know how Hitler had the Stauffenberg plotters hanged with piano wire and the way he gloated over a movie of their demise agonies. We didn’t know, till just lately, how a wicked regime put a whole bunch of younger ladies to the worst of deaths.
Geoffrey Robertson KC is founding head of Doughty Road Chambers and the creator of ‘Mullahs With out Mercy’