Iranian authorities have installed large concrete walls and high metal poles for security cameras around Khavaran cemetery, the burial site of thousands of political prisoners executed in 1988.
Footage of the authorities installing concrete walls and installing security cameras around the Khavaran mass gravesite has been shared on social media.
Iranian regime officials have long been attempting to keep family members of the 1988 massacre victims away from this site and seeking to destroy evidence of the mass graves to deny the entire massacre.
To eradicate the evidence of the crimes against humanity, the Iranian regime has been systematically destroying the graves of the victims of the massacre in Tehran and various cities across the country, including Ahvaz, Tabriz, and Mashhad.
Iranian authorities’ restrictions on Khavaran cemetery came following the final hearing session of the trial of Hamid Noury, an Iranian regime official involved in the torture and murder of thousands of political prisoners. The court will deliver its final verdict on July 14.
In the summer of 1988, the regime carried out a complete purge of prisons under the orders of mullahs’ regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini, executing more than 30,000 prisons in the span of a few months.
At the time, Noury was assistant deputy prosecutor of Gohardasht prison, west of Tehran. He actively participated in the execution of political prisoners at the facility. During the court hearings, many witnesses testified on how Noury and other regime authorities tortured prisoners and took them to a hall where they were hanged in groups.
During Hamid Nouri’s trial in Sweden, court prosecutors asked Iranian officials to visit Khavaran Cemetery, but their request was not granted.
Khavaran cemetery has been bulldozed multiple times in recent decades.
In the latest criminal act to destroy Khavaran cemetery in April 2021, Iranian authorities told the followers of the Baha’i faith in Tehran that they must bury their dead in the mass graves of political prisoners.
In a statement on April 29, 2021, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Eltahawy said: “This is the latest in a series of criminal attempts over the years by Iran’s authorities to destroy mass grave sites of victims of the 1988 prison massacres in a bid to eliminate crucial evidence of crimes against humanity, denying the truth, justice and reparation to the families of those forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret.”
