According to the report, political decisions on the murders were made by the "Special Operations Committee." Many leading figures in the Iranian regime are members of this committee, but the mullah who plays the key role in the committee is Mohammad Hejazi, head of the Special Office for Security and Intelligence Affairs of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Hejazi worked in Khomeini's office during the early years of the mullahs' rule. He was among the founders of the Ministry of Intelligence and served as a deputy to Mohammadi Rayshahri, the first Minister of Intelligence. After Khomeini's death in 1989, Hejazi was transferred from the Intelligence Ministry to Khamenei's office, where he took up his current position as the coordinator of the mullahs' intelligence agencies.
A panel of mullahs who are all Khamenei's confidants issued the "fatwas" or religious decrees sanctioning the murders. They included Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardians Council, Mesbah Yazdi, Rasti Kashani, Abolqassem Khazali, a former member of the Guardians Council, and the ex-Chief of the Judiciary Mohammad Yazdi. They are known as "the Leader's advisers on religious laws."
Khamenei's special office also employed the services of several individuals to pave the way politically and provide justifications for the murders and other atrocities. They included individuals such as Hassan Shayanfar, the former deputy to Assadollah Lajevardi, the Butcher of Evin, and Revolutionary Guards' Brigadier General Hossein Shariatmadari, the former Deputy Minister of Intelligence for Social Affairs who is now the publisher of the state-run daily Kayhan.
15 senior Revolutionary Guards officers headed by Brigadier General Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr, deputy supreme commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, were also deeply involved in the political murders. They included Brig. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Guards' "Quds (Jerusalem) Force," Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, the Quds Force's ex-commander, and Brig. Gen. Hossein Nejat, commander of Sarollah Guards Base, responsible for suppression of protest acts in Tehran.
After the go-ahead was given to carry out the killings, a special group made up of Revolutionary Guards' and Intelligence Ministry officials under Hejazi's direction was assigned to the task. Direct responsibility for the killings was given to Deputy Intelligence Minister Mullah Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi. At the time of the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, Pour-Mohammadi sent thousands of prisoners to their deaths.
Saeed Emami, who was the security adviser to the Minister of Intelligence at the time of last year's murders, was responsible for the planning and execution of the killings. Other close accomplices of Pour-Mohammadi and Emami in the murders were Mostafa Kazemi (a.k.a. Moussavi-Nejad), the Director general for internal security at the Ministry of Intelligence, who was at the same time the Director General of the department devoted to activities against the Mojahedin, Mehrdad Alikhani (a.k.a. Sadeq), the Director general for activities against other political groups, as well as Mohsen Hassani, Senobari, Mohammad Sharifzadeh, Akbar Khoshkoush, and Hossein Shariatmadari.
The clerical regime's leaders - including Khamenei, Rafsanjani and Khatami - have done their utmost to keep a tight lid on the real identities of the perpetrators and masterminds of these atrocities. They have even prevented the publication of the names and particulars of those who have been arrested in connection with the murders. Khamenei and Khatami have made a deal to avoid at any cost any revelation about the role of Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards in the killings and also the atrocities that have been committed against members of the opposition, especially the Mojahedin, in the mullahs' prisons.
An important step taken by the mullahs' regime to keep a lid on the fiasco was to murder Saeed Emami, who had been the Deputy Intelligence Minister for eight years, and claim that he had committed suicide. A dead suspect was the most convenient scapegoat to blame for everything and prevent more senior officials from being implemented in the murders.
The Mojahedin Command's report stated: About 30 officials and agents of the Intelligence Ministry were summoned for interrogation or detention after the Intelligence Ministry's role in the murders was divulged. But most were released almost immediately. They included Mohsen Hassani, a deputy director general, Senobari, the deputy director general for personnel, Shahidi, the Director General of Intelligence in Isfahan Province, Mohammad Sharifzadeh, another deputy director general, Brig. Gen. Abdollahi, Zolqadr's deputy, and Brig. Gen. Ahmad Zolqadr, the brother of the deputy supreme commander.
The Mojahedin Command in Iran pointed out that it was continuing its investigations into the murders and the outcome would appear in subsequent reports. It urged all Iranians who have any information on the murders to submit it to the Mojahedin.
The Iranian Resistance has presented a summary of the report by the Mojahedin Command inside Iran to the UN Secretary General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Security Council, the Islamic Conference Organization, the Arab League, the European Union, the Vatican, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and international human rights authorities and organizations. The Resistance has called for the condemnation of these heinous crimes by the international community and the immediate dispatch of a UN fact-finding mission to investigate the murders on the spot.
People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran
January 5, 2000
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