In our previous piece, we learned about the massacre, how no one has ever been prosecuted, and the call for justice. Now, we will focus on regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini’s intention regarding the massacre of the members and sympathizers of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

Khomeini’s intention for the 1988 massacre of the MEK has always been clear: he wanted to annihilate the MEK and stop them from fighting for democracy. He said as much in his fatwa, where he explained that he wanted to uproot and obliterate the MEK.

Then, he deployed his killing machine across Iran, most intensely in Evin and Gohardasht prisons, where MEK political prisoners were mostly housed. The killings of the MEK were so atrocious that even Khomeini’s heir at the time, Hossein Ali Montazeri, described them as a “slaughter… which has not taken place anywhere else in the world”.
Despite Khomeini’s best efforts, his massacre of the MEK did not remain a secret. The leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Massoud Rajavi, wrote to UN Secretary-General Javier Pres de Cuellar on August 25, 1988, and said that 860 corpses belonging to the executed MEK political prisoners were moved from Evin Prison in Tehran to the Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery in three days alone.

The massacre of the MEK took place in prisons located in provincial capitals and other cities based on a second edict from Khomeini, who said that the judges shouldn’t waste time by sending the files to provincial capitals and ordered that the MEK be executed in the prisons they currently resided in. The latest list of MEK victims during the 1988 massacre indicates that this horrific crime took place in at least 110 cities.

Indeed, the recent exhibition about the Iranian people’s historic fight against the mullahs’ religious tyranny shows that all of Iran’s provinces, without exception, were scenes of countless executions since the start of the regime.

Maryam Rajavi said: “The people of Iran belonging to all ethnic groups or religions, from all cities or provinces, have paid the heaviest price and are united for the regime’s overthrow and achieving freedom. It is not an accident that these cities and provinces are hotbeds of constant uprisings and protests, and the cities rise up one after the other in protest. Our society has a burning fire in its heart, leaving Khamenei at an impasse. So, the regime’s overthrow is a definite and certain fate for the mullahs.”

In our next piece, we will discuss the arrest and execution of former prisoners or supporters of the MEK, many of whom had already served their full sentences. This is further proof that the massacre was not punishment for a crime but the removal of the greatest threat to the regime.