Raisi's Trip to South Africa; Mahmoud Amiri-Moghaddam: Raisi is Accused of Crimes Against Humanity

While Ebrahim Raisi, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has traveled to South Africa to attend the BRICS summit, the head of a human rights organization states that he is accused of crimes against humanity and should be prosecuted. The Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Thursday, August 24, that Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Pretoria at the invitation of Cyril Ramaphosa, the President of South Africa, to participate in the summit of the 'Emerging Economies' group known as BRICS. Concurrently with Raisi's visit, Mahmoud Amiri-Moghaddam, the head of Iran's Human Rights Organization, stated in an exclusive interview with Voice of America that everyone should protest Raisi's presence. Raisi, a member of the Death Committee and head of the government in the Islamic Republic regime, is a guest of the South African government today. It is regrettable that the South African government, a country that itself is considered a victim of apartheid (a type of crime against humanity), welcomes a criminal of this level. Previously, Iraj Mesdaghi, a former political prisoner in Iran and a human rights activist, also mentioned in a Voice of America program that Ebrahim Raisi fears traveling abroad due to his role in crimes against humanity. Ebrahim Raisi, who has been the President of Iran since 2021, has a long history in the judiciary and issuing death sentences. He began his career as a prosecutor at a young age. According to Hossein Ali Montazeri, a former deputy leader in the 1980s, Raisi was one of four members of the so-called Death Committee that decided the fate of political prisoners, leading to the execution of several thousand of them by the committee's orders. In recent years, many complaints have been filed against Raisi, but no legal case has been established against him yet. In May 2021, more than 150 former UN officials and prominent human rights and international law experts, along with 24 international NGOs, called in an open letter to Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for the establishment of an international commission of inquiry into the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in Iran during the summer of 1988. Also, in September of that year, 25 Nobel laureates emphasized the necessity of forming an international commission to investigate this 'genocide and crimes against humanity in Iran' in a letter to the UN Secretary-General on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the 1988 executions in Iran. In December 2021, more than 100 Iranian athletes sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General demanding accountability and trial for Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Ebrahim Raisi in the UN Security Council for the 1988 massacre under the title of crimes against humanity. In June 2022, Human Rights Watch referred to the execution of thousands of political prisoners by the Islamic Republic in the summer of 1988 as a 'crime against humanity.' In 2019, Hamid Nouri, a former prosecutor, was arrested in Sweden and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Swedish judiciary for his involvement in the executions of political prisoners in 1988 after dozens of court sessions. Raisi's presence in South Africa comes at a time when Vladimir Putin canceled his trip to South Africa due to concerns about legal prosecution and sent his foreign minister instead. Putin is being pursued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Ukraine. As the host of the BRICS summit, South Africa is a member of the International Criminal Court, and it is mandatory for the country to execute the arrest warrant against Putin. If Vladimir Putin were to attend, he would have to be arrested and handed over to this court. The International Criminal Court accused the Russian president in March of this year of war crimes for the forced deportation of children from Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine and issued a warrant for his arrest. Moscow denies these allegations.