Hope Springs Supreme
22nd June 2021
Iran’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi seems a somewhat clarifying figure. He is the head of regime’s judiciary. He is under sanction by the United States for his role in the mass execution of thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. He earned his nickname the hangman honestly. See Mariam Memarsadeghi’s Tablet backgrounder “Meet ‘The Butcher,’ Iran’s New President Ebrahim Raisi” and Bret Stephens’s New York Times column “Iran Bets on Religion, Repression and Revolution.”
The AP quoted a senior official of Amnesty International upon Raisi’s election last week: “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran.”