Tribunal to Investigate 1980s Massacre of Political Prisoners in Iran
By Owen Bowcott, The Guardian – October 18, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/8rbtjmy
Hearing in The Hague aims to uncover truth about death of 20,000 people, including many teenagers
As political liquidations go, it is a massacre that ranks alongside some of the worst excesses of the 20th century: at least 20,000 Iranians executed in prison in the 1980s.
Yet it received scant international attention. Unlike the carnage of Srebrenica or the purges of General Pinochet’s coup in Chile, there was little worldwide outrage, and no opportunity for justice and legal redress.
But this month the killings, perpetrated by then-Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime, will be examined by an independent tribunal in The Hague in a process that exposes the shortcomings of the international justice system.
The hearing, aimed at uncovering the truth of what occurred in Iran’s jails, highlights the selective nature of what goes before the UN’s courts and special tribunals. Founded in 2007 because no official judicial body would investigate complaints against Iran, it is a cross between a people’s truth commission and a formal legal indictment.
It is based on the model developed by a private international war crimes tribunal established in 1966 by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to investigate the US war record in Vietnam.
The focus of the Iran tribunal is the mass executions carried out inside the country’s jails from 1981-89 of political prisoners, men and women. About 4,500 people, many teenagers and from leftwing groups, died in summer 1988 alone, according to Amnesty International.
Iranian exiles claim 20,000-30,000 prisoners died in total – victims of a fatwa issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, then head of state. The extent of the killings has been largely ignored by the west.
British lawyers on the tribunal’s legal steering committee include Prof John Cooper QC and Sir Geoffrey Nice, a former prosecutor at the international criminal court (ICC) and Gresham professor of law. Other founders were the former South African minister Kader Asmal, who has since died, and the UN rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, Prof Richard Falk. All are unpaid.
In a recent lecture, Nice drew attention to the gaps in international justice. “War crimes courts and tribunals established over the last 20 years have changed the way the world citizen can think,” he said. “As a result the world citizen may assume that they, like national courts, are part of a coherent, judicial crime and punishment system that happens to be international. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
The choice of conflicts for judicial intervention was highly selective, he said. “The ICC suffers a further, significant and probably irremediable defect … The treaty-based permanent court has been ratified by only 121 of the approximately 200 countries of the world.
“The US, Russia and China in particular are not members. The court is not good enough for their citizens, it would appear. Yet they are happy to send citizens of other non-ratifying countries like Sudan or Libya to the court for trial through a security council resolution.” Iran has also failed to ratify it.
The tribunal, Nice said, was a two-stage process intended not just to leave a record but to hold the regime accountable for its crimes against humanity.
“This is a conflict that would never be selected for international attention despite its gravity. The informal tribunal – that may be matched by others and by other internet and computer-assisted processes yet to be imagined – shows that the world citizen can hope courts will serve him well, but can easily find the means to do much of the job himself if they don’t.”
The first stage of hearings took place in London this summer at Amnesty International’s premises. About 75 witnesses, many surviving detainees, gave evidence – some in person, others via video.
By choosing the Peace Palace, home to the UN’s international court of justice, the Iran tribunal hopes to acquire some of the authority of its surroundings. The final sessions will be from 25-27 October.
Hamid Sabi, a London-based lawyer who fled Tehran in 1979 and one of the organisers, has not had a response to his invitation to the Iranian government to attend the sessions.
“Until a few months ago no one spoke about this in Iran but as a result of [the tribunal] so many Iranian papers began talking about it. [The government] response was: ‘Yes, we did kill them in prison but we were entitled to under international law.’
“It’s known as the ‘bloody decade’. Thousands of people were murdered and tortured. In some cases families were simply told to come and collect their bodies. We have around 17,000 names. The fatwa in 1988 ordered that all those fighting the regime, such as the mujahideen, were apostates. If they did not embrace Islam, as he [Khomeini] believed it, they should be killed. It resulted in the mass liquidation of the prison population.”
Thousands of prisoners were brought before committees and asked whether they renounced their political organisations, were Muslims, prayed, believed in the Islamic republic and were prepared to walk through Iraqi minefields.
According to evidence given to the tribunal they were given a few minutes to consider. A negative answer resulted in their being taken out and hanged on cranes or shot. Women were reportedly raped before execution. Bodies were often dumped in mass graves; many have never been recovered.
“Most of the prisoners didn’t know what was happening,” Sabi said. “It took years for the families to put their forces together. They wrote to the UN rapporteur on human rights in Iran, they wrote to the UN human rights committee. No one was interested. So they set up the tribunal.”
Most of the funds, he said, came from the families. “We have not taken money from any corporation or government. We have had witnesses from extreme Muslim groups through to Maoists. Half of them were former prisoners. One woman lost four brothers.”
The London sessions were broadcast online and on the last day, thousands and thousands of people were watching around the world.
Some leftwing groups have criticised the tribunal for stoking resentment against Tehran at a time when Israel threatens a strike at its nuclear facilities.
“It will be a people’s court in The Hague,” Sabi said. “We have no power or jurisdiction but we have moral authority. Perhaps it will remind everybody that one day they may have to answer for crimes they have committed.”
via The 2012 Scenario
