The first anniversary of Iran’s wrestling champion Navid Afkari’s execution was September 12. Nonetheless, on September 20, the world community will allow Ebrahim Raisi, a major human rights criminal, to speak at the United Nations General Assembly.
Navid Afkari and Two Brothers Arrested
Navid Afkari and his two brothers were arrested in Kazeroun during the massive Iran demonstrations of 2018. Navid was wrongly accused of assassinating a security guard based on a confession obtained through torture over the course of a month. Navid had denied killing the security man and had filed an appeal with the court.
Nonetheless, the appeal was turned down by Ebrahim Raisi, the then-Judicial Chief. Navid was executed without due process and despite international protests against his death.
According to his counsel, the regime’s Supreme Court denied political prisoner Vahid Afkari’s appeal for a retrial. Despite the case’s discrepancies, the Afkari brothers’ lawyer, Saeid Dehghan, wrote on Twitter that the Supreme Court’s 38th branch had denied their appeal for a retrial.
Dehghan wrote, “Even if they just skimmed through the case document, there were enough legal reasons to accept a retrial because the verdict contains 24 contradictions and three lies.”
Reign of Terror
The regime’s modus operandi has included mistreating political detainees, assassinating them in secret, and breaking international laws. Raisi, who is currently the regime’s president, is notorious for following the regime’s policy when it comes to dealing with political detainees.
In the 1980s, he began his career as a prosecutor for the regime, where he handed out numerous death sentences. His crimes peaked in the summer of 1988, when he took part in the slaughter of political detainees in Tehran as a member of the so-called “death commission.”
Raisi’s terrible human rights record helped him become the Supreme Leader’s preferred presidential candidate.
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance, and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said when Raisi was chosen as the regime’s new president on June 19.
international Community Complicit in Deaths
In Iran, the supremacy of “impunity” has disastrous consequences for the country’s overall human rights status. Seven UN human rights experts, including Ms. Callamard, said in December that the impunity stemmed from the international community’s passivity in the aftermath of the 1988 massacre. They stated that the international community’s inability to act had a “devastating impact” on Iran’s overall human rights status.
The killing of Iranian demonstrators in November 2019, the subsequent abuse of arrested protesters, and the execution of Navid and other political prisoners are current examples of the catastrophic impact of the international community’s silence and Iran’s impunity dilemma.
If the international community had exerted pressure on the religious dictatorship, criminals like Raisi would not have been able to rise to positions of power, and many families, including Afkari’s, would not have been torn apart.
