Responding to today’s announcement declaring Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s next president, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said:
Ebrahim Raisi has Risen:
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency; instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder; enforced disappearance; torture; is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran. In 2018 our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the ‘death commission; which forcibly disappeared; extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. Moreover, The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are; to this day; systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, ‘As Head of the Iranian Judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi has presided over a spiraling crackdown on human rights which has seen hundreds of peaceful dissidents; human rights defenders, and members of persecuted minority groups arbitrarily detained. Moreover, Under his watch; the judiciary has also granted blanket immunity to government officials and security forces responsible for unlawfully killing hundreds of men; women and children and subjecting thousands of protesters to mass arrests and at least hundreds to enforced disappearance; and torture, and other ill-treatment during and in the aftermath of the nationwide protests of November 2019.
Electoral Process:
Moreover, “It is now more urgent than ever for member states of the UN Human Rights Council to take concrete steps to address the crisis of systematic impunity in Iran including; by establishing an impartial mechanism to collect and analyse evidence of the most serious crimes under international law committed to; Iran to facilitate fair and independent criminal proceedings.”