by Giulio Meotti
Ebrahim Raisi has been appointed as the new president of Iran. Known as “the butcher” for executing thousands of opposition dissidents in 1988 while serving as Tehran’s deputy prosecutor, Raisi also allegedly ordered the torture of pregnant women, the Mail on Sundayreveals.30,000 prisoners are believed to have been executed – hanged by construction cranes or shot – during the purge. Ayatollah-dissident Hossein Ali Montazeri called it “the greatest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic” when news broke that Iran was cleaning up and erasing the mass graves where it had buried the victims of that massacre.
Why is that not on the front page of the NYTimes?
Farideh Goudarzi, who was jailed for being part of a banned political group, told the Mail how Raisi had her tortured during pregnancy and forced her to give birth in prison. Similarly Mahmoud Royaee, another political prisoner questioned by Raisi during the 1988 executions, said he handed down a death sentence to an inmate who was in the midst of a seizure.
“I was arrested with my husband and my brother in the summer of 1983,” said Goudarzi. “I was pregnant at the time of my arrest and had little time left before my baby was born. Despite my condition, they took me to the torture room immediately after my arrest. It was a dark room with a bench in the middle and a variety of electrical cables. One of the people who was present during my torture was Ebrahim Raisi, then chief prosecutor of Hamedan and one of the members of the ‘death committee’. After my son was born, they moved us into solitary confinement. Those were such horrible days as I had to undergo several interrogations every day with my newborn baby… ”.
Mahmoud Royaee told the Sun about his own torture at the hands of Raisi. Royaee spent ten years in prison where he was tortured after being offered the chance to make a televised confession, but he refused. Mahmoud was thus found guilty of being “at war with God” and was told that he “deserved to be killed”. “Raisi beat prisoners with an electric cable,” Royaee said. “The first time I was beaten on the soles of my feet I tried to count but the pain made it impossible. He was also one of the few judges who signed a religious sentence for someone who was thrown off a cliff ”.
What these people are capable of is unfortunately known history. So is the hypocrisy of the West.
Where are legions of indignados who for a year have accused the West, Trump and Israel of being unjust, evil and racist, and spent their free time knocking down statues and destroying names? Where are the people filling the squares who protested against the US?
Where are the rainbow marchers? Where is the UN, which was ready to send inspectors to Italy to investigate our “notorious racism”?
Ah, the UN. It has just elected Raisi’s regime to the Women’s Rights Commission. Did we understand, yes?