Letter from Over 100 Iranian Athletes: Bring the 1988 Executions File to the Security Council
Coinciding with the trial of Hamid Noori, accused of participation in the summer 1988 executions, over 100 Iranian athletes have called on the UN Secretary-General in a letter to hold Ali Khamenei and Ibrahim Raisi accountable in this regard.
In this letter, the summer 1988 executions are described as “genocide and crimes against humanity,” and the United Nations is asked to prosecute Ibrahim Raisi, Iran’s current president, as “one of the perpetrators of this major crime and other actors involved.”
One hundred Iranian athletes, among whom are the names of world and Olympic champions, have called on António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, to take action by referring the 1988 massacre case to the UN Security Council for investigation and prosecution of those responsible for this mass killing, particularly Ali Khamenei and Ibrahim Raisi.
The signatories of this appeal wrote that among the victims of the massacre were several athletes and members of national teams, and Forouzan Abdi, a member of Iran’s women’s national volleyball team, was one of these victims who was executed seven years after her imprisonment.
Thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s, particularly in summer 1988, were executed in Evin and Gohardasht prisons in Tehran and prisons in Mashhad, Shiraz, Ahvaz, and some other Iranian cities under the direct order of Ayatollah Khomeini, the then-leader of the Islamic Republic, and by the decision of committees that became known as death committees.
Many of those executed were supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization and some were supporters of other left-wing groups who had been imprisoned in the early years of the 1980s.
Due to the Iranian government’s concealment, there is no accurate count of these executions, but according to Amnesty International’s report, at least 4,482 men and women disappeared within a two-month period.
According to Iranian athletes in this letter, among 120,000 execution victims over the past 40 years, several sports champions stand out, including Habib Khabiri, captain of Iran’s national football team who was executed in 1984, and Navid Afkari who was executed in 2020.
Navid Afkari was a former member of Iran’s wrestling team who was arrested during the August 2018 protests in Shiraz and accused of “moharebeh (enmity against God) and killing an employee of a security institution.” Despite numerous ambiguities raised by his lawyers, he was executed on September 12, 2019, and buried secretly at night.
Afshin Shahvardi, world judo champion, Mohammad Ghanbarzadeh, winner of a world wrestling gold medal, and Solmaz Abouali, world karate champion, are among the signatories of this letter who wrote: “Silence and inaction in the face of genocide and crimes against humanity at the end of the twentieth century encourages the continuation and escalation of crime.”
In this letter, the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Council, and other relevant UN bodies are asked to take action in this regard.
Source: Radio Farda
