Judgment time

 by V.M.

Folloing a harrowing three-day hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Iran Tribunal delivered its interim judgment on October 27th. According to the tribunal, which has no legal standing, the Islamic Republic of Iran committed crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights against its citizens during “the bloody decade” of 1980s.

The tribunal was set up in 2007 by survivors and families of victims living in exile and comprises leading jurists from around the world. It heard statements from experts and witnesses on how the Islamic Republic systematically crushed political and religious dissent in the decade following the 1979 revolution, executing 20,000 of its citizens. During the summer of 1988 alone, 5,000 political prisoners were hanged from cranes or shot by firing squad under a direct fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader. The victims were leftists, students, members of opposition parties and ethnic and religious minorities—many originally sentenced for non-violent offences, such as distributing leaflets or taking part in demonstrations.

The tribunal’s ruling builds on “a formidable corpus of evidence”, which includes the report of a Truth Commission held in London in June. The Commission heard 75 witnesses, who were either tortured and imprisoned themselves or are the family of executed prisoners. Around 100 witnesses in total submitted evidence describing the same pattern of arbitrary arrest and detention without trial, of rape, death sentences issued by kangaroo courts, children as young as 11 being executed, families made to pay for the bullets used to kill their relatives. They recalled how torture was routinely used to break prisoners, make them recant their religious or political beliefs, or denounce others: they described flogging, beating, being suspended in the air by their arms twisted behind their backs, made to sit blindfolded for months in tiny boxes known as “coffins” and being tortured in front of their children or spouses. “The evidence speaks for itself. It constitutes overwhelming proof that systemic, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights were committed by and on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the judges said.

The Iran Tribunal is now calling for the Iranian regime and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to investigate these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. That is unlikely to happen. But for the survivors and the bereaved, the tribunal is a victory in itself: it has allowed their voices to be officially recorded and heard in court for the first time in 25 years.

Bits of the proceedings were seen inside Iran, despite the government’s attempts to block foreign broadcasts.  “We have been inundated with calls from people in Iran saying they wanted to record the deaths of loved ones, which they had never told anyone about,” says Pardis Shafafi, a legal assistant with the tribunal.

“For the first time, people in Iran—especially the younger generations—are finding out what happened in the ‘80s and can see how the past still informs the present,” says Shokoufeh Sakhi, who testified at the hearing. She was arrested while still in secondary school, spent six years in prison where she was tortured and survived the 1988 massacre. She is now a PhD student in Canada.  “What happened in the '80s doesn’t belong to the people of the '80s. It laid down the foundations of where these young people were born: they were born in a climate of fear and oppression, and they are used to it and accept it, but the roots for the present situation have to be found in the massacres of the '80s." The judges are expected to deliver a full judgment in November./economist.com