Dozens of people gathered outside the Embassy of Iran in London to celebrate Ebrahim Raisi’s death (Picture: DannyRigg/Metro.co.uk)
A former political prisoner in Iran who came face-to-face with the Butcher of Tehran Ebrahim Raisi before his death in a helicopter incident has opened up about the ‘relief’ he felt.
Funeral processions for Iranian president Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian will begin on Tuesday next week in the northwestern city of Tabriz.
While the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, announced five days of public mourning, victims have been celebrating.
Ahmad Ebrahimi, who survived the 1988 massacre branded ‘Iran’s greatest crime against humanity’, told Metro.co.uk Raisi’s death is a major blow to the regime.
At the age of 17, he was arrested in Tehran for supporting People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) and was sentenced to a suspended execution. His sentence was later reduced to seven years in Gohardasht Prison.
Iran’s then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a formal fatwa – a religious decree – ordering that all Mujahedin supporters be executed unless they repent.
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Raisi, then deputy prosecutor general, was part of a ‘four-man commission, later known as the death committee’, which commanded the killings of 30,000 people.
Mr Ebrahimi recalled how Raisi visited him in jail in August, 1988: ‘I survived as I was not brave enough.
‘Raisi came to Gohardasht Prison, asking prisoners questions if they still support the PMOI. Many said they did and were executed.
‘I did not do that, I was not brave enough. That was my personal encounter with Raisi. So many of my friends were executed in 1988.
‘This was the aim of the regime – to break prisoners and force them to obey their ideology.’
What happened in the 1988 massacre in Iran?
After the end of the war with Iraq in the summer of 1988, the Iranian regime executed thousands of political prisoners without a trial.
Between 5,000 and 30,000 people were killed. Authorities have never formally acknowledged these executions.
Their bodies were dumped in unmarked individual and mass graves scattered across the country, so many families still do not know where their loved ones lay.
Prisoners were interviewed about their political believes and categorised according to the degree of their perceived loyalty to Iran’s rulers.
The authorities had done that multiple times before the summer of 1988 in an effort to isolate those who were ‘steadfast’ in the believes.
Most were hanged or shot by firing squad after giving answers which were deemed ‘incorrect’.
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He described the torture he had to endure in jail in the hands of regime officials, who wanted him to give up the names of other PMOI supporters.
Mr Ebrahimi was often beaten and kept in a basement where the ground was all covered in blood and vomit of other prisoners.
Some 25 years after fleeing to the UK, where he worked as an electrical engineer, he rejoiced at the demise of Raisi on Sunday after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed into a mountain as the president returned from a visit to Azerbaijan.
The former political prisoner added: ‘Consider the grief of so many mothers and fathers of people killed by the regime. Think about the 850 people executed in 2023. Families are feeling relief.’
Mr Ebrahimi is not alone. While Raisi’s followers in Tehran were pictured praying for him after his death, victims of his torturous regime danced at his demise.
Ahmad Ebrahimi survived the 1988 massacre in Iran
Families of victims of Raisi’s torturous regime carried his portrait with a red cross on his face (Picture: DannyRigg/Metro.co.uk)
A few dozen people gathered outside the Embassy of Iran in Kensington, south London, today.
Zohrah Zajani, one of the protesters outside, was among the few who survived the regime during the 1980s, before escaping to Turkey by foot after her release.
She said: ‘From the time the news came that his helicopter maybe crashed or he is missing, everybody started celebrating.
‘There was a lot of joy in Iran. They were saying his helicopter maybe crashed in a place where there are lots of wolves and bears, so people pleading, “Please make sure they don’t come out alive”.
‘This time, more than anything, I think of those mothers and fathers who lost their children and their family in the massacre.
A veiled Iranian woman is beating herself while participating in a mourning ceremony for the late Iranian president (Picture: NurPhoto/Shutt)
‘Some of them, they do not even know where their loved ones are buried.’
The 64-year-old could write ‘a whole book’ about her experience in prison, where the guards lashed her feet with metal cables until her soles were swollen ‘like a pillow’.
They would then make her run on her wounded feet before continuing the torture on her hands and back.
Others had hands chopped off or cigarettes stubbed out on their skin. Some were given electric shocks, deprived of sleep for days, or raped.
‘My friends spent nine months in a cell that was only 90cm by one metre. They could not talk to each other, they could not stand, they could not sleep. They just had to sit like that,’ she recalled.
A map showing the site of the helicopter crash (Picture: Metro.co.uk
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‘They tortured children in front of their mothers, and mothers in front of their children, to break their resistance.’
Another woman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution against her family still living in a village in northern Iran, was also outside the embassy.
She told Metro.co.uk: ‘Both of my aunt’s sons were executed in the 1988 massacre.
‘My youngest cousin, the sister of those two brothers, was arrested along with her husband. At the time she was arrested, she had a six-month-old baby in her arms.
‘We don’t know what the regime did with my cousin, her husband or the baby. My family went to different cities in Iran and were begging the regime to give back the baby, but we got no reply. We still don’t know what happened.
Iran’s late president Ebrahim Raisi (Picture: AFP)
‘This is why I was so pleased when I heard [Raisi died], and not only me – millions of Iranians last night on social media, they were chanting, they were celebrating. The brutality of this regime is beyond human beings’ comprehension.’
On social media, activists such as Masih Alinejad – an Iranian-American author and women’s rights campaigner based in New York – are celebrating Raisi’s death.
A video released on X show Mersedeh Shahinkar and her friend Sima Moradbeigi dancing in happiness.
During the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests in 2022, Shahinkar was blinded by the violence of the security forces, while Moradbeigi lost the use of one arm after she was shot in her elbow at point blank range.
Iranians were seen in other footage dancing to live TV news coverage of the crash.
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