Amnesty International | 19 June 2021
Responding to today’s announcement declaring Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s next president, Amnesty
International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said:
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against
humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and 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 and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of
political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. 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.
‘As Head of the Iranian Judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi has presided over a spiralling crackdown on human
rights which has seen hundreds of peaceful dissidents, human rights defenders and members of
persecuted minority groups arbitrarily detained. Under his watch, the judiciary has also granted blanket
impunity 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.
“Ebrahim Raisi’s rise to the presidency follows an electoral process that was conducted in a highly
repressive environment and barred women, members of religious minorities and candidates with
opposing views from running for office.
“We continue to call for Ebrahim Raisi to be investigated for his involvement in past and ongoing crimes
under international law, including by states that exercise universal jurisdiction.
“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 in Iran to facilitate fair and independent criminal proceedings.”
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/06/iran-ebrahim-raisi-must-be-investigated-for-crimes-
against-humanity/