Iran - Maryam Rajavi: "Rise and stand up to the policy of executed by the ruling religious dictatorship"

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance

Messages of Maryam Rajavi on the World Day Against Death Penalty: I hail the brave men and women who were executed by Iran's ruling religious dictatorship in the battle for freedom. More than any other party, the World Day Against the Death Penalty targets the Iranian regime that has so far executed 120,000 political prisoners who were serving their prison sentences, but were hanged just for their political beliefs. Mrs Rajavi said: According to Khomeini's fatwa, any prisoner who continued to adhere to the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), had to be executed.

The number of executions including political executions in Iran over the past one year exceed the number of executions carried out in most of the years of Khamenei's rule. The mass executions of 25 Sunni Kurds on August 2, 2016, and the executions of three Arab political prisoner on August 17, 2016, are just to name a few examples. According to the report by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Ahmad Shahid, nearly 1,000 people were executed last year in Iran. Then, in March 2015, Rouhani's Interior Minister Rahmani Fazli admitted, "Undoubtedly, part of the dirty money of drug trafficking gets funneled into the country's politics, elections and transfer of power." The death penalty faces growing opposition and general detestation in Iran, as well. The movement to obtain justice for victims of the massacre in 1988 has expanded in recent months cornering the mullahs with regards to continuing the executions.

Maryam Rajavi: I call on the international community to provide the arrangements for the prosecution of the clerical regime's leaders, particularly its leader Khamenei, in the international courts for the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners. We call on western governments to make their relations with the Iranian regime contingent on a moratorium on executions. The Iranian people and Resistance will bring justice to the clerical regime for violating their human rights. This Resistance has rise up to create a society that bears no trace of the death penalty, torture, and inhuman verdicts issued under the mullah's regime.