On Aug. 9 the digital audio tape recording belonging to Hossein Ali Montazeri the former heir to Khomeini rule, surfaced on amontazeri.com on the anniversary of political prisoner's Massacre in 1988 which has created an uproar among regime's top authorities. On this audio tape Montazeri protests the mass executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Montazeri was dismissed by Khomeini the former supreme leader of the Iranian regime and under house arrest for his protest until he died in 2009. In the summer of 1988, the Iranian regime summarily and extra-judicially executed 30,000 political prisoners held in jails across Iran. This massacre was carried out on the basis of a fatwa by Khomeini. The Iranian regime has never acknowledged these executions or provided any information as to how many prisoners were killed. The majority of the slain political prisoners were from the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). A day later on Aug. 10, 2016 the regime's Ministry of Intelligence requested that Montazeri's son remove this file and on Sat. Aug. 13 he was summoned for questioning.Maryam Rajavi the president-elect of the Iranian resistance described the tape as a historic document and said: The tape recording of Mr. Montazeri’s Meeting with Those Responsible for Mass Executions of Political Prisoners is a Testament to Mojahedin’s Refusal to Surrender and to Regime Leaders’ Responsibility for Crimes Against Humanity
Khamenei, whose name is mentioned in the remarks made by the members of the “death commission” in this very meeting, openly declared his support for the mass executions that same year, and in the 28 years since has maintained close ties with the murderous officials who carried them out. He is a mastermind of these atrocities, and must be made to answer to the Iranian people and put on trial, she said.
She added: Mr. Montazeri, himself a founder and ideologue of the principle of velayat-e-faqih (absolute rule of the clergy), emphasizes in the recording, “The Iranian people are repulsed by the velayat-e-faqih” and “later will say that Agha(referring to Khomeini) was bloodthirsty and brutal figure.” His statements attest to the illegitimacy of the ruling regime from the 1980s, to the people’s repugnance towards the velayat-e-faqih, and to the righteousness of the resistance to overthrow that regime. Montazeri’s remarks addressed to the four members of the ‘death commission’ that this massacre was “the greatest crime committed during the Islamic Republic,” and the four officials’ acknowledgement that they were in the process of massacring the Mojahedin political prisoners and planning how to continue this atrocity, leave no room for doubt that the actions of these four men and many other leaders of the regime involved in these atrocities are, by any measure or definition, a crime against humanity.
She added: The international community, therefore, is obligated to bring them to justice. In particular because these four individuals and the others who carried out the massacre of political prisoners referred to in this meeting have, from the beginning of this regime to the present day, held posts at the highest levels of the judicial, political and intelligence . At present, Mostafa Pourmohammadi is Hassan Rouhani ’s Minister of Justice. Hossein-Ali Nayyeri is the current head of the Supreme Disciplinary Court for Judges. And Ebrahim Raeesi is among the regime’s most senior clerics and the head of the Astan Qods-e Razavi foundation (a multi-billion dollar religious, political and economic conglomerate and one of the most important political and economic powerhouses in the clerical regime).
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Iranian authorities have intensified their repression of women’s rights activists in the country in the
first half of this year, carrying out a series of harsh interrogations and increasingly likening any collective initiative relating to women’s rights to criminal activity, Amnesty International said on Wednesday Aug. 10. The organization’s research reveals that since January 2016 more than a dozen women’s rights activists in Tehran have been summoned for long, intensive interrogations by the Revolutionary Guards, and threatened with imprisonment on national security-related charges. “It is utterly shameful that the Iranian authorities are treating peaceful activists who seek women’s equal participation in decision-making bodies as enemies of the state. Speaking up for women’s equality is not a crime. We are calling for an immediate end to this heightened harassment and intimidation, which is yet another blow for women’s rights in Iran,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Interim Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International.******
The Iranian regime hanged Kurdish political prisoner, Mohammad Abdollahi, 35, in Orumiyeh
Central Prison on Aug. 9. He was a native of the city of Bukan. He was accused of Moharebeh or "Waging war against God". Abdollahi was hanged with 5 other prisoners named: Kamran Pouraft, Tohid Pourmehdi, Jabrail Kanaani, Jahangir Razavizade and his wife Parisa Hatami. The couple's child who was living in prison was handed over to her relative before execution.
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- In the capital city Tehran, preschool teachers continued their third day of rally in front of the Iranian regime’s Majlis, or Parliament on Tuesday August 9, from 8 in the morning. Protesters came from different cities and called for determination of their employment status. The protests follow more than five years delay by the regime in responding to the teachers’ demands. The regime has each time refused to respond to the rights of teachers and has instead threatened them or acted to expel or suppress them.
- In Mashhad, north-east Iran, on Tuesday, August 9, a group of financial victims of the state-affiliated Pardissian Company rallied in front of the state-run Khorasan newspaper affiliated to the regime’s Astan Qods conglomerate in Mashhad Sadoughi Street.
They protested the lack of coverage by this newspaper about their issues.
- The city of Rasht in northern Iran also witnessed a protest rally of Chuka employees in front of the entrance gate of the company.
Demonstrating workers carried banners reading “Respect workers' rights' and called for an immediate resolution to their excruciating circumstances.
Chuka Company has been closed down for several months under the pretext of repairs and the worker's salaries have not been paid. The protest surpassed its second day.
