“Complete Destruction of Ahvaz Mass Graves by Municipality”

The Justice for Iran website reported the “complete destruction of mass graves” of victims from the 1980s and other graves of political prisoners in Ahvaz by the city’s municipality.

The Justice for Iran website reported on Wednesday (August 25) that “Ahvaz municipality officials in the final days of June, under the pretext of building a boulevard and green space, completely destroyed the mass grave of victims of the 1967 massacre and other burial sites of political prisoners.”

According to the Justice for Iran website’s report, news, videos and photos of this “Ahvaz municipality” action have been “fact-checked by the Justice for Iran website.”

The report states that “the entire area that previously contained mass and individual graves of executed political prisoners from the 1980s was leveled with earth using mechanical excavators” and this area is currently “under strict security surveillance.”

Some “eyewitnesses” also told Justice for Iran that “the entire operation of removing all traces and stones placed by families took less than 24 hours.”

The Justice for Iran website reported, quoting a number of families of 1980s victims, that “in 1967 and during the massacre of political prisoners, at least 44 male and female political prisoners in Ahvaz were buried in mass graves in the Padadshah area.”

A man named Issa Baziar, as an “eyewitness,” told Justice for Iran that “in early August 1967 he witnessed corpses being dumped into freshly dug pits at night. Families believe that authorities immediately poured concrete over the bodies after burial to prevent them from excavating the ground and finding their loved ones.”

According to Justice for Iran’s report, these burial sites over the past years “have constantly been subject to desecration and government authorities’ attempts at cover-up” and “for more than a decade, the area surrounding it had been covered with debris and construction waste to erase it from public view and make it difficult for families to access.”

Based on this report, although the “municipality’s” operations in the area began in early 2017, “after families were informed and human rights organizations and the United Nations warned of the possibility of destroying mass graves, it was halted.”

Justice for Iran and Amnesty International published an investigative report in April of this year, warning of the destruction of “mass graves with the intent to destroy evidence of the 1967 massacre.”

According to the report by these two organizations, Islamic Republic officials “deliberately” destroyed the mass graves of victims of the 1967 massacre of political prisoners in at least seven Iranian cities.

The Islamic Republic’s security agencies have also repeatedly destroyed Khavaran Cemetery in Tehran over the past three decades.

Islamic Republic officials have rarely spoken about the mass executions of prisoners in the summer of 1967, and the burial site of these prisoners has also never been officially announced.

Most of the prisoners executed that year were members of groups such as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, the Tudeh Party, the Fadaian, and other leftist groups who had previously been tried and were serving their prison sentences.

According to Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, the then Deputy Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini personally ordered the execution of those who, according to him, “persisted and persist in their hypocritical stance in prisons throughout the country.”

Many of those executed were buried in Khavaran Cemetery, anonymously and in mass graves.

Source: Radio Farda