Aftershocks of the Release of Ayatollah Montazeri's Audio File

The aftershocks of the release of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri's audio tape regarding the executions of 1988 continue. In a public session of the Parliament on Tuesday, Hossein Naqvi Hosseini, the representative of Varamin, addressed a letter from Ali Motahari to Mostafa Pourmohammadi concerning the released audio file, referring to Ayatollah Khamenei's directive to the Parliament to take a firm, revolutionary, and clear stance against what he calls "hostile and anti-revolutionary political currents." He stated that the Deputy Speaker of Parliament does not deserve to have such positions regarding the Mojahedin. In response, Ali Motahari remarked that one should not be "more caring than the mother" and questioned how demanding answers about a topic relates to the Mojahedin organization and the "grandeur of Imam" and other issues. Following the release of Ayatollah Montazeri's tape, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the Minister of Justice and a member of the decision-making body for the death penalty for political prisoners in 1988, accused some of whitewashing what he referred to as "the bloodthirsty enemies of the Iranian nation." In reaction to Pourmohammadi's statements, Motahari wrote in a letter on September 6 to Pourmohammadi, questioning why he resorts to fallacies instead of clarifying the issue and addressing the questions raised in people's minds, exploiting their human, religious, and revolutionary sentiments. However, it was not only Pourmohammadi who defended these executions; the Assembly of Experts, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, Mohammad Reza Aref, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and various news agencies and websites in the Islamic Republic also reacted and condemned the release of Montazeri's statements. Hashemi Rafsanjani described the main goal of releasing this audio file as an attack on Ayatollah Khomeini and Ahmad Khomeini. On Tuesday, an open letter from Sadegh Zibakalam, a university professor, was published addressing Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in which Zibakalam described Hashemi Rafsanjani's stance as "causing surprise, regret, and disappointment among Mr. Hashemi's supporters" and stated that the implicit endorsement of the 1988 executions not only contradicts all of your positions over the past two decades but also undermines and questions the moderation and centrism that have been your most prominent characteristics. Following the release of Montazeri's audio tape, Ahmad Montazeri, the son of Ayatollah Montazeri, has been summoned several times to the Revolutionary Court. He was also supposed to appear in the Revolutionary Court on Tuesday. Ahmad Montazeri said about his presence in the Revolutionary Court, "Although the behavior is friendly, it is still an interrogation." Ayatollah Montazeri, who at that time was the Deputy Leader of the Islamic Republic, opposed the execution of political prisoners and, on August 15, 1988, summoned four members of the decision-making group regarding the fate of political prisoners, calling these executions a crime that will forever stain the Islamic Republic. Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the then-representative of the Ministry of Intelligence at Evin Prison, Hossein Ali Niri (the then-judge), Morteza Eshraqi (the then-prosecutor), and Ebrahim Raisi (the then-deputy prosecutor) were members of the four-person committee that decided on the executions of prisoners in 1988. According to published statistics, during the 1988 executions, at least about three thousand political prisoners who were serving their sentences were executed.