Ali Razini, Trusted Judge of Khomeini and Khamenei: Who Was He and What Did He Do?

Ali Razini, a prominent figure in the repressive apparatus of the Islamic Republic, was assassinated alongside Mohammad Mogheiseh in the Justice Palace building, closing the chapter of his life forever. He was one of the notorious figures of the Islamic Republic who played the role of enforcers during the rule of both Supreme Leaders of the Islamic Republic. Razini was a simple revolutionary cleric before the revolution, politically and religiously active in Hamadan province, mainly in his hometown of Razan. He graduated from the Haqqani seminary, where he became acquainted with Ayatollah Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti and Hojjatoleslam Ali Qodosi. He was enamored with the discourse of Islamic fundamentalism based on Shia principles. After the revolution's victory, he quickly joined the judiciary. With Beheshti's favorable opinion, Ali Qodusi, the then-revolutionary prosecutor, recruited him into his deputy section. His first mission was to review sentences in the anti-narcotics section issued by Sadegh Khalkhali. After the onset of the conflict between the People's Mujahedin of Iran and the Islamic Republic in the summer of 1981, he was transferred to the prosecutor's office at Evin prison to handle the cases of imprisoned opponents, mainly members of the People's Mujahedin. Shortly thereafter, he moved to the city of Bojnord and issued numerous death sentences as a Sharia judge, which even drew objections from senior judicial officials at the time. Razini then took on the role of the revolutionary prosecutor for the entire northern Khorasan, including Quchan, Dargaz, and Shirvan. Later, in late 1982, he was transferred to Mashhad, where he served as a revolutionary court judge and then as the provincial coordinator for judicial rulings of the revolutionary courts. He remained in Khorasan until 1984, rising within the judiciary due to his harshness and cruelty against political opponents and intensifying repression. In 1984, Razini, alongside Mostafa Pourmohammadi, was responsible for investigating the misconduct of Seyyed Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi, the former Attorney General. This case led to his direct connection with Ayatollah Khomeini. Razini explained in an interview that he and Pourmohammadi accepted the founder of the Islamic Republic's request to prevent legal prosecution but refused to destroy the documents of Mousavi Tabrizi's moral and economic corruption case due to fear of the consequences. They eventually convinced Ayatollah Khomeini to hand the case over to Seyyed Ali Khamenei. From this point on, Razini established a personal relationship with Khamenei. After the dismissal of Assadollah Lajevardi from the revolutionary prosecutor's office in Tehran, the efforts of Ayatollah Montazeri and the moderate faction of the regime to change the judiciary's approach were unsuccessful, and Razini replaced Lajevardi as the revolutionary prosecutor of Tehran. He continued Lajevardi's extremist policies in a complex manner. Razini harbored resentment against Ayatollah Montazeri due to his protests based on reports from his supervisory committee regarding the continued torture and mistreatment in prisons. However, his insistence on showing severity against prisoners and political opponents and executing the security apparatus's directives drew the attention of Ayatollah Khomeini's office, and with the support of Seyyed Ahmad Khomeini, special cases were assigned to him. During his time as the revolutionary prosecutor in Tehran (1984-1986), he fabricated cases against hundreds who had completed their sentences and were held illegally in prison, sentencing them again to three to five years of imprisonment. Some of them were killed in the mass executions of 1987. Razini also collaborated with the death committee in the 1987 mass executions and always supported what he called the 'great crime.' After becoming the first head of the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces in 1986, Razini took on three significant responsibilities in the last year of Ayatollah Khomeini's life. First, by reviving the special court for clergy, he became its judge and took on the case of Mehdi Hashemi. In this case, he worked in complete coordination with Mohammad Rishahri, the Minister of Intelligence, advancing the pre-designed scenario outside the judicial and legal process, issuing and quickly executing Mehdi Hashemi's death sentence; he claimed that Seyyed Ahmad Khomeini was surprised by the speed of execution and expressed happiness that Ayatollah Montazeri's mediation to prevent the execution had become impossible. Razini subsequently received a special order to address the situation of detainees from the 'Eternal Light' or 'Marzād' operation, to hold trials for captured members of the People's Mujahedin without adhering to cumbersome regulations. In these trials, which were worse than field courts, he issued numerous death sentences that were executed immediately. Additionally, as the head of the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces, he was tasked with addressing the misconduct of senior war commanders, but this did not lead to any outcomes due to the intervention of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and political expediency. During Khamenei's leadership, Razini advanced within the judiciary. From 1994 to 2004, he served as the head of the Tehran judiciary for ten years, playing a significant role in dealing with the press, student activists, and civil and political critics and dissenters. He then became the head of the Administrative Justice Court for five years. Subsequently, he served as a legal advisor to Sadegh Larijani, the then-head of the judiciary, for five years. From 2014 onwards, he was the head of Branch 39 of the Supreme Court, which dealt with significant security and political cases. Several prison and death sentences against political and ideological activists were confirmed in this branch. Razini was also a faculty member at Azad University, the Faculty of Religious Knowledge affiliated with Jamiah al-Zahra, and Payame Noor University in Razan. He was also a member of the Leadership Representatives Council in the country's universities for a time, whose function was to manage the security and ideological aspects of universities and suppress academic freedoms. After the 2010s, Razini no longer held a high position in the repressive structure and acted as a supporter and a low-level pawn. He distanced himself from the principlists and tried to politically position himself between them and the 'moderates.' Razini became a member of the fourth Assembly of Experts from Hamadan province. However, in the fifth term, he did not receive support from the Society of Teachers of Qom Seminary and the Society of Combatant Clergy of Tehran. Support from the People's Experts list (Rafsanjani – reformists) and the Moderation Friends (Hassan Rouhani) also could not help him, and he was ultimately not elected. In the sixth Assembly of Experts elections, despite the support of the Society of Combatant Clergy of Tehran, he failed to win votes.