Bring Iran’s Mullahs to justice for the Evin massacre
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Those who like to consider the worst way to die – for Montaigne, it was to be hanged on piano wire; for Orwell, to be eaten by rats – need not rack their imagination any longer. It was allegedly inflicted on young women in Evin prison and elsewhere in Iran in 1988. First came the death sentence, then, according to some accounts, forced marriage and rape just before being hanged or shot, in order to deny them the fast track to heaven accorded to virgins in the Mullahs’ warped theology. When I inv
Those who like to consider the worst way to die – for Montaigne, it was to be hanged on piano wire; for Orwell, to be eaten by rats – need not rack their imagination any longer. It was allegedly inflicted on young women in Evin prison and elsewhere in Iran in 1988. First came the death sentence, then, according to some accounts, forced marriage and rape just before being hanged or shot, in order to deny them the fast track to heaven accorded to virgins in the Mullahs’ warped theology. When I investigated these prison massacres some years ago, I heard of this horrific allegation but dismissed it for lack of evidence. But I believe there is good reason to return to them now.
Iran has gone to extraordinary lengths to cover up the crime. When some news of it leaked at the time, a naïve international agency rapporteur was welcomed to Evin with a brass band, where schooled prisoners pretended they were well-treated. It was only years later, with the publication of the diaries of a senior Mullah who reprimanded the death committee during their work at Evin, that the truth began to come out, but not about the fate of the women who were allegedly raped before execution. The diaries also included a copy of the merciless fatwa issued by the Ayatollah in fury at having to sign a truce in the war with Iraq.
Given the impunity of the Mullahs, the best that can be done is to expose the extent of their crimes as an indication of the barbarity of which their government is capable – if, for example, they possess a nuclear bomb. We know how Hitler had the Stauffenberg plotters hanged with piano wire and how he gloated over a film of their death agonies. We did not know, until recently, how a depraved regime put hundreds of young women to the worst of deaths.
Geoffrey Robertson KC is founding head of Doughty Street Chambers and the author of ‘Mullahs Without Mercy’
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