IRAN’s new president is nicknamed ‘the butcher’ and has been accused of torturing pregnant women and throwing prisoners off cliffs.
Ebrahim Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric, made his formal accession as the Islamic Republic’s new leader today after an election in June.
“Following the people’s choice, I task the wise, indefatigable, experienced and popular Hojatoleslam Ebrahim Raisi as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote in a decree.
As head of Iran’s judiciary, the traditionalist is a close ally of the Ayatollah whose confidence he has gained after holding key positions of power over four decades.
Raisi replaces Hassan Rouhani whose landmark achievement was the nuclear deal between Iran and six western nations in 2015.
In his inaugural speech, the new President said he would seek to lift “oppressive” sanctions by the United States but would not tie the “nation’s standard of living to the will of foreigners.”
The 60-year-old leader is personally subject to US sanctions because of past human rights abuses.
The director of The Crisis Research Institute, Oxford, Mark Almond, told the Mirror said that Raisi’s track record of crushing opponents “should serve as a warning to anyone in the West who is hoping that this hardline, ultra-conservative with blood-soaked hands will be a friend.”
Dubbed the “Butcher of Tehran”, Raisi has been accused of being involved in the mass execution and horrific torture of political prisoners in the 1980s.
It’s reported that he was a key member of the so-called “Death Commission” which ordered thousands to be killed in the massacre of 1988.
In 1980, at the age of just 20, Raisi was appointed prosecutor of the revolutionary court of Karaj, west of Tehran, and by 1988 he had been promoted deputy prosecutor of Tehran.
He then became one of four individuals selected to carry out the slaughter of imprisoned activists of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
Some 30,000 men, women and children held in prisons all over Iran were lined up against the wall and shot within just a few months, say those battling to oust the regime.
Geoffrey Robertson, a London-based human rights lawyer, described the slaughter as the worst crime against humanity since the concentration camps of World War II.
Their bodies were doused with disinfectant, packed in refrigerator trucks and buried at night in mass graves.
Geoffrey Robertson QC
He said that victims were “hanged from cranes four at a time, or in groups of six… some were taken to army barracks at night, directed to make their wills, and then shot by firing squad.
“Their bodies were doused with disinfectant, packed in refrigerator trucks and buried at night in mass graves.”
Farideh Goudarzi was eight months pregnant when she says she was seized by the authorities in Iran over her support of the PMOI, also known as Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).
However, despite her condition, she told The Sun Online she was not spared the horrific and brutal torture regularly doled out in the Islamic Republic at that time.
She said the very first time she came across brutal Raisi was when she was dragged into a courthouse torture chamber at the age of 21 in the summer of 1983.
He was one of the seven men tasked with torturing her after she was taken into custody, she claims.
Mahmoud Royaee was rounded up by the Iranian authorities when he was an 18-year-old student for a “thought crime.”
Royaee spent ten years in prison where he suffered tortured after being offered the chance to make a TV confession – which he declined.
He was later found guilty of being at “war with God” and was told he “deserved to be killed.”
However, he claims his only “crime” was reading newspapers and supporting freedom.
He only escaped the noose when his father “spent at lot of money” to reduce his sentence from execution to 10 years in a hellhole jail.
The day before his inauguration, Raisi’s regime hung three prisoners in Urmia Prison.
Since the election in June, at least 62 prisoners have been executed, the NCI reported.
This was a dramatic increase from previous months.
Raisi became a household name in 2017 when he was appointed the head of Iran’s judiciary.
In 2019, he oversaw the brutal crackdown of dissidents which in turn Amnesty International called him to be tried for crimes against humanity.
“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’s General Secretary Agnes Callamard has said.
A British national was killed and we have to make clear there are certain lines that can’t be crossed.
Foreign Office insider
Yesterday an angry Boris Johnson warned Iran that it would face “consequences” for killing a Brit at sea in a drone strike.
The PM blamed the hostile state for the hit on oil tanker Mercer Street that left the security guard and a Romanian sailor dead – and is working with the US and Israel on how to respond.
Government sources said a “range of options” was being drawn up for retaliation after Thursday’s attack off Oman.
And today the British government is said to be preparing for a military strike against Tehran’s Middle East militia.
A Special Forces team, including SAS specialists and Special Boat Service commandos, flew out to join the stricken tanker and take charge of the investigation.
The ‘kill or capture’ mission could involve several dozen members of Britain’s most elite special forces operators and members of the Paras, The Mirror reports.
Yesterday a senior defence source said the most likely would be in cyberspace, warning “nobody will see it here but they will be left in no doubt you cannot kill a Brit unchecked”.
A Foreign Office insider added: “A British national was killed and we have to make clear there are certain lines that can’t be crossed.”
Yesterday shocking photos emerged that supposedly show a “massive hole” in an Israeli tanker after it was allegedly hit by an Iranian drone strike.
One photo shows a massive hole in the deck of the ship while another reveals damage to the top of the vessel.
The pictures have not been officially verified.
The attack on the Mercer Street, which is linked to an Israeli billionaire, occurred off Oman in the Arabian Sea.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the night raid on the Liberian-flagged tanker.
Suspicion immediately fell on Iran, which has been linked to other attacks on tankers and has been engaged in a tit-for-tat shadow war with Israel in which each other’s ships have been targeted.
But the country’s state media has come out directly and claimed responsibility, saying the attack was retaliation for an Israeli strike on Syria.
