|
USADI Commentary
Rafsanjani's Crimes against Humanity
Nearly seventeen years ago,
the tyrants who rule Iran carried out one of the most horrific
political mass killings of our times. In what is now known as
"The 1988 Iran massacre," tens of thousands of political
prisoners were summarily executed nationwide in a span of a few
months, beginning in mid-summer 1988. Many international law
experts believe this heinous atrocity qualifies the current
Iranian leadership as a perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
It is widely expected that
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's former President the
powerful Parliament Speaker and the acting Commander-in- Chief
at the time of the 1988 massacre, would be declared the victor
in the June 17 presidential election.
As Rafsanjani is
preposterously busy reinventing his image for the second time as
a moderate, his appeasement-prone admirers on both sides of the
Atlantic have already cast him as a pragmatic insiders' insider
who can make things happen.
Rafsanjani's appalling record
as president and as a key figure in Iran's theocratic leadership
since 1979 has been out in the open. However, his decisive role
in leading, planning, and carrying out the 1988 massacre has not
yet been fully addressed.
In 1981, the Iranian regime
embarked on systematic arrest, torture and execution of
political dissidents. Tens of thousands of Iranian men and women
were imprisoned or executed; members and sympathizers of Iranian
People's Mujahedeen Organization (PMOI) comprised the vast
majority of executions.
In the mid-1980s
international pressure increased tremendously on the clerical
regime, urging it to open its prisons to human rights monitors.
The problem was what to do with tens of thousands of political
prisoners that had been subjected to the most brutal forms of
torture. The murderous patriarch Ayatollah Khomeini came up with
a solution: Kill them all. In a fatwa in summer of 1988,
Khomeini ordered the following:
"Those who
are in prisons throughout the country and remain committed to
their support for the [Mujahedeen], are waging war on God and
are condemned to execution.... Destroy the enemies of Islam
immediately. As regards the cases, use whichever criterion that
speeds up the implementation of the [execution] verdict."
According to published
documents, Khomeini first raised the idea of his fatwa at a
meeting attended by his key advisors including Rafsanjani,
then-President Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (the then President), and
Mohammad Khatami (then Director of Cultural Affairs at the
General Command of the Armed Forces and Minister of Islamic
Guidance). As the regime's de facto Number Two, Rafsanjani
vigorously defended the fatwa After Khomeini issued the fatwa,
Rafsanjani oversaw its enforcement as Khomeini's representative
and reported to him on the progress of the massacre.
Rafsanjani of course has
already proved his ruthlessness in the summer of 1981, when
large- scale execution of dissidents began. The testimony of
many former political prisoners indicates that he regularly
visited prisons to make sure political prisoners were dealt with
harshly. It is documented that he facilitated the execution of
the prisoners by making it easier for the judges to issue death
sentences.
He infamously told a
state-run daily in 1981 that: "God's law prescribes four
punishments for them (the Mujahedeen).1-Kill them. 2-Hang them,
3- Cut off their hands and feet 4-Banish them. If we had killed
two hundred of them right after the Revolution, their numbers
would not have swelled this way. I repeat that according to the
Quran, we are determined to destroy all who display enmity
against Islam." He eventually fulfilled that promise in summer
of 1988 and later during his two-term presidency where scores of
prominent Iranian dissidents were assassinated at home and
abroad.
By any measure, the massacre
of 1988 constitutes a crime against humanity. The current
leadership of the clerical regime, including Khamenei,
Rafsanjani and Khatami, who were actively involved in this
hideous crime, should be held to account.
Rafsanjani's brush with the
international criminal law does not end here. In 1997, the
criminal court of Berlin implicated Rafsanjani for his direct
role in the assassination of Iranian dissidents abroad,
according to Iran Focus news journal.
And this is the man who the
Trans Atlantic appeasers of mullahs want us to believe would end
Iran's nuclear weapons program. A murderous charlatan with no
respect for the sanctity of human life and an insatiable
obsession with weapons of mass destruction is nothing but a
hoax.
(USADI)
Return to Top
The
Washington Times
June 16, 2005
Rafsanjani
and his hitmen
By
Hossein Abedini
It was 15 years ago, but still seems like yesterday. In
mid-afternoon on March 14, 1990, I was sitting next to the
driver taking me to the Istanbul airport, when we hit a traffic
jam caused by an accident.
Suddenly, a
car carrying four men blocked our path. Another car pinned us in
from behind. Seconds later, two men, one from the front car and
one from the car behind, raced out with automatic guns. As they
approached, I opened the car door and rushed at them carrying
only a small briefcase. One of the men fired nine bullets; the
other man's gun jammed. I was shot in the chest and stomach and
gravely wounded. The assailants fled.
Luckily, we
were close to Istanbul's International Hospital, where I was
rushed. I was in a deep coma for 40 days, and unconscious for
three months. With 80 percent of my liver gone, I barely
survived and was written off by my doctors more than once. One
bullet hit very close to my heart. I went through 14 operations
and was given 154 pints of blood.
I am a member
of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the coalition of
Iranian opposition movements. The assailants were acting on
behest of the clerical regime, the main state sponsor of
terrorism. Ironically, as later became evident, the hit men
weren't after me. Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the Foreign
Affairs Committee of the NCRI, was the real target, as Iranian
state radio confirmed.
Even so, this
didn't end the attempts to kill me; there were two efforts to
finish me off in the hospital. Once, assassins disguised as
Turkish police approached the hospital; luckily, the Turkish
police came to the hospital at the same time and foiled the
plot. Another time, two men pretending to be friends came to my
room. They were the mullahs' men. Once again, I was fortunate;
several real friends came to visit me at the same time, and the
murderers fled.
I am one of
very few who has survived mullahs' assassination attempts. My
episode is relevant now because all this took place when Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was the clerical regime's president.
With new Iranian presidential elections approaching, he is
touted as the front-runner, and some in the West are hoping to
be able to strike a grand bargain with him.
It is
important to know that there was a clear pattern of
assassination and murders during his previous term.
Professor
Kazem Rajavi, Iran's most renowned human-rights activist, was
gunned down in broad daylight by the mullahs' hitmen while
driving near his house in Geneva in 1990. The Swiss implicated
13 Iranian officials with passports stamped "Special Mission."
Documents released by Mr. Rajavi's family showed that in 1997 a
Swiss magistrate "clearly" had enough evidence to justify an
international arrest warrant against Iran's then-Intelligence
Minister, Ali Fallahian.
The Rajavi
murder was not an isolated incident during Mr. Rafsanjani's
presidency. Several Iranian Kurdish leaders were murdered in
Vienna in 1989 and in Berlin in 1992. The list goes on.
A Berlin
court ruled in 1997 that a secret committee comprising supreme
leader Ali Khamenei, Mr. Rafsanjani, then-Foreign Minister
Ali-Akbar Velayati, and Mr. Fallahian, had ordered the 1992
assassinations.
The mullahs'
terror targets were not only Iranians. The FBI established
undeniable evidence that Tehran had masterminded the bombing of
Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, resulting in the deaths
of 19 American servicemen. Nor is Mr. Rafsanjani's
mischief-making limited to terrorism; he is an ardent proponent
of Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons.
For two
decades, Europe's appeasement policy has failed. The notion of
fishing up a moderate from within the regime has been offered in
different wrappings for different occasions, all to no avail.
The West's
greater blunder was trying to placate the mullahs by labeling as
terrorists the People's Mujahedeen, the principal Iranian
opposition, 120,000 of whose members and sympathizers have been
executed so far. The Mujahedeen also has played a paramount role
in exposing the mullahs' nuclear program and terrorist network.
This terror-listing decision — denounced by renowned jurists as
baseless and devoid of any legal basis — has only emboldened the
regime's most extreme factions in suppression, nurturing
terrorism, and the quest to acquire nuclear weapons.
All signs
indicate that the Iranian people are completely disenchanted by
the clerical system and desire fundamental changes for
democracy. It would be naive and shortsighted to pin any hope on
a spent force like Mr. Rafsanjani. The West must ally itself
with the Iranian people's cry for freedom. A first step would be
to remove the Mujahedeen from the terror list it never should
have been on. The West should declare in no unequivocal terms
that it does not recognize this sham as an election.
Hossein Abedini is a member of the
the National Council of Resistance of Iran, one of many
organizations working to overthrow the regime in that country.
Return to Top
The Washington Times (Editorial)
June 16, 2005
Iran's sham election
As Iranian voters get ready to go to the polls
tomorrow in the first round of presidential elections, the
avalanche of breathless media hype has already begun. We've been
treated to plenty of pontificating over the supposed "liberals"
(the enlightened ones who tell us what we want to hear about
women's rights and political freedom). To win, these liberals
will need to fend off the evil "conservatives" -- the most
backward of the ayatollahs, men who won't even give interviews
to the New York Times pretending to be for democracy,
transparency and women's rights and opening up the economy.
In reality,
all of this is a sham. Recent polls suggest that the Iranian
people want democracy and loathe the clerical dictatorship run
by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- who will continue to control
the country regardless of which of the candidates on the ballot
wins the election. (There may be a runoff election between the
top two vote-getters next week.) Iran's Constitution invests
actual authority in Ayatollah Khamenei, and stipulates that "All
laws and regulations" must "be based on Islamic principles."
The authority
to determine whether a statute adheres to such principles is
granted to the Supreme Leader of the country (Ayatollah
Khamenei) and the Guardian Council, an institution where the
supreme leader chooses most of the members. In the current
election, the council approved just six of the more than 1,000
candidates who sought to run for president. In short, tomorrow's
election is designed to ensure that the world is gulled by the
pretense of democracy while Ayatollah Khamenei and the clerics
retain dictatorial control over the country....
Return to Top
|
