A newly surfaced audio recording by BBC Persian on Tuesday, April 14, 2025, containing a conversation between Hossein-Ali Montazeri and members of the decision-making group on the 1988 summer executions, exposes further evidence about the massacre of political prisoners that year.
This audio recording, which is approximately 27 minutes long, captures the second meeting between Hossein-Ali Montazeri, then-Deputy Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, and three members of the “Death Committee.”
According to the report, Mr. Montazeri, in this session held at his residence in Qom on December 30, 1988, speaks with three senior judiciary officials of the time: Hosseinali Nayyeri (religious judge), Morteza Eshraqi (Tehran prosecutor), and Ebrahim Raisi (deputy prosecutor).
It is worth recalling that in July 2016, an audio file of Montazeri’s first meeting with the Death Committee, dated August 15, 1988, was published. In that recording, Montazeri told the committee members, referring to the executions carried out in August 1988, “You have committed the greatest crime in the history of this regime.”
The newly released recording, which includes only part of Montazeri’s second meeting with the Death Committee and has some sections removed, sheds light on further aspects of the genocide of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and executions of other political groups by order of Khomeini.
In this recording, Montazeri explicitly attributes responsibility to Ahmad Khomeini and the Ministry of Intelligence for the massacre of political prisoners, reminding Ahmad Khomeini: “You yourself told me that these Monafeqin [a derogatory term for the MEK]—10,000 of them who just read leaflets—should all be executed.”
Montazeri had also stated in the first meeting: “The Intelligence Ministry was behind the massacre and invested in it, and Mr. Ahmad himself had been saying for the past three or four years that all Mojahedin, whether reading newspapers, magazines, or leaflets, must be executed.”
Another truth Montazeri emphasizes is the public’s disgust toward the rule of the Supreme Leader (Velayat-e Faqih), saying:
“The concept of Velayat-e Faqih has become repulsive to the people; the people are fed up with it… The very families we’ve now killed are all saying that the hypocrites were right… If we had attracted them with kindness, compassion, and such things, their numbers would have decreased, but instead, we keep increasing them.”
Referring to Mojahedin girls captured during their military operation in Kermanshah Province, Montazeri says:
“Mr. Khalkhali was sitting right here and said 300 girls were brought in, supposedly involved in Mersad (Operation Eternal Light), in Bakhtaran (Kermanshah province), and two of them were French nationals. Incidentally, Khalkhali said he was there. I said, ‘Now, execute everyone… but don’t execute these two French girls.’… They said, ‘No, execute them.’… I read that a committee has been formed in France to investigate… This woman was captured in Mersad, bang! That’s it. Did we realise how much we could have negotiated with France for those two girls, with prisoners or something else?”
In another example, Montazeri says:
“One night, Eslami from Shiraz brought a file, a girl from Tehran… He brought her will… This girl wrote to her parents, ‘Don’t be upset, the world is transient,’ citing the Quran, Nahj al-Balagha, and such things… I asked, ‘Does this girl have a history of murder or something?’ He said, ‘No, she was just a supporter.’… From head to toe, her will was radiant with light… Islamic law says that if a woman doesn’t believe in God, the Prophet, the Quran, or anything, she’s an apostate, then she can’t be killed… This girl who believes in God, the Prophet, the Quran, everything, but just says, ‘This Islamic Republic isn’t to my taste,’ can she be executed? Is this what jurisprudence has become?”
Montazeri even questions the regime’s interpretation of Islamic law regarding the execution of women labeled as “Mohareb” (those who wage war against God):
“I even have serious doubts about women and girls. Ibn Idris claims it’s widely accepted that a female mohareb cannot be executed. Many of them weren’t mohareb anyway; a mohareb is someone who takes up arms. In reality, many of them had just read pamphlets and then ended up in prison.”
It is notable that Montazeri revealed these facts while he was still officially the successor to Khomeini and had not yet been dismissed. Despite his criticisms, he continued to defend the regime as a whole. Even in the solutions he proposed, he emphasized that his goal was to preserve the regime and protect the image of Khomeini. Montazeri even deemed it permissible to execute 100 PMOI members in prison and to publicly announce it, saying:
“… They’ve ruined our reputation worldwide. The international community has condemned us so much. Families are in mourning. The solution was what I proposed that day (referring to the first meeting with the Death Committee): Those with organizational links or communication with the Mojahedin—Eshraghi would try them, and let’s say 100 of them would be sentenced to death and executed. Then we would announce it: yes, they did these things… But now we’ve done something that aligns with neither Sharia nor logic.”
Montazeri also says: “I wished that the sanctity of Velayat-e Faqih would remain respected, as it was when Mr. Khomeini first came to Iran, inspiring hope in everyone. Everyone loved him. I wished he could stay that way.”
With the release of this second tape, new dimensions of the massacre of political prisoners are exposed. A heinous crime that UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman, in his latest report, has characterized as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide against the PMOI.
Javaid Rehman’s report emphasizes: “The number of individuals involved in these crimes is vast—from the leadership, Sharia judges, prosecutors, Ministry of Intelligence representatives, members of the ‘Death Commission,’ to their facilitators, including prison guards, IRGC members, and all those who, under international law, either committed these crimes or enabled their ongoing concealment.” He adds that many of these individuals “remain in senior positions to this day. Those who committed crimes against humanity and other violations of international law in the 1980s must be held accountable, and impunity must end in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
