Iran’s President Is a Mass Murderer
21st July 2021
The US and other western countries are faced with a dilemma: how to bring to justice a man with the blood of thousands on his hands when you have to do business with him.
Ebrahim Raisi’s path to the presidency of Iran is strewn with corpses. He comes to office this month already under American and European sanctions for the mass murder of prisoners in 1988. Some 5,000 may have been killed, though we can only guess at the true number of dead. It was a crime against humanity in the strict legal meaning of that term. At an earlier stage in his career, Raisi is said to have personally supervised the torture of dissidents, but in the 1988 case his responsibility was bureaucratic. He was a grim fanatic, eager to carry out orders. He was — and remains — Iran’s hanging judge.
Well, he’s not the first. Mohammad (mhrih) wasn’t too bad at it, either.