More Than 100 Prominent Iranians Ask UN to Declare 1988 Massacre “Crime Against Humanity”

[TomSea]

More Than 100 Prominent Iranians Ask UN to Declare 1988 Massacre “Crime Against Humanity”

In a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court, more than one hundred Iranians living outside Iran, including several prominent civil, academic, and human rights figures, have asked for the recognition of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s prison massacre of 1988 as a crime against humanity.

According to the authors of this letter, “the legal basis for the court’s jurisdiction regarding Iran would be a referral by the UN Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter but political interests of the members with veto power prevent the realization of this option.”

“We, the undersigned, consider the 1988 massacre of Iranian political prisoners to be a clear case of Crime against Humanity. We urge international human rights organizations and the United Nations Human Rights Council to condemn the Islamic Republic of Iran for its systematic hostility to the civil and political rights of its citizens,” states the letter.

The letter emerged a few weeks after an audio recording of a 1988 meeting between Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri, then heir apparent to Islamic Republic of Iran founder Ayatollah Khomeini, and a group of high-level state officials and clerics who orchestrated the mass executions and later became known as the “Death Committee,” was published.

Read More At: https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2016/09/1988-mass-executions-100-iranians-letter/