The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash is a major blow to the Islamic regime, an exiled opposition group said Monday, predicting a succession of crises.
The People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) and its political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), have long detested Raisi, accusing him of involvement in the 1988 mass executions of thousands of their members and other dissidents when he was a young prosecutor.
Raisi at the time was a member of what opponents call a four-man “Death Committee” that sent convicts to their executions without a shred of due process.
Raisi’s death “represents a monumental and irreparable strategic blow to the mullahs’ supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the entire regime, notorious for its executions and massacres,” NCRI leader Maryam Rajavi said in a statement. “It will trigger a series of repercussions and crises within theocratic tyranny, which will spur rebellious youths into action,” she said.
The MEK backed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah but swiftly went into opposition and was blamed for a swathe of deadly attacks that rocked Iran in the early 1980s.
The MEK has been exiled from Iran since then. It is far from having universal support among the Iranian diaspora but is backed by several high-profile US and European officials.
Raisi flatly denied personal involvement in the 1988 killings while praising the decision to go ahead with the executions.
Amnesty International described the massacres as crimes against humanity in a 2018 report that accused Raisi of being a member of the Tehran “death commission” that dealt with prisoners in the Evin prison in Tehran and the Gohardasht prison in Karaj.
The NCRI says some 30,000 prisoners were killed in the massacres, although Western rights groups say only thousands were killed.
With AFP
