It was a sultry afternoon in July 1983. A dozen members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard pulled out their guns and knocked down the door of Aunt Farideh Goudarzi. At 9 months pregnant, the 21-year-old girl could barely run, let alone walk. Under the surveillance of her opposition activities and the distribution of anti-regime leaflets, all Gudazi can do is wait.
“I was taken directly into an interrogation room about three to four meters long, with only a table in the middle for whipping prisoners,” she said. “The floor was full of blood. I didn’t know that a lot of fresh blood came from my husband, who disappeared two days ago.”
Although there are still a few days before the birth of her first child, Gudaz remembers that almost every inch of her trembling body was brutally beaten with a cable and slapped her face so greedily that she still suffers from Jaw arthritis and bursts of shooting pain.
“About eight people stood there and whipped me. But the one I remember most was a man-he was very young, maybe 21 or 22 years old, with a dark shirt over his pants. He stood in the corner and looked at other people. Whip me, whip me,” said Gudazzi, now 59. “He seems to enjoy it. That person is Ibrahim Raisy.”
This wild-eyed man will assume the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran this week, succeeding the moderate Hassan Rouhani at the helm.
Ayatollah Khamenei’s carefully selected front-runner Ebrahim Raisi’s possible rivals were banned from participating in the June 18 elections, and the international community mainly referred to it as a farce. In addition, most of the other seven candidates are unknown to the general public and are considered not to pose any serious threat to Lacey.
But his legacy has armed human rights organizations.
Even after giving birth, Gudachi kept her crying, malnourished son in solitary confinement for more than six months before being sentenced to death. Facts have proved that Gudachi served six years in Hamadan Prison and listened to familiar faces every day being taken to be executed late at night-including the face of her husband. Finally, he was hanged in the prison yard.
Raisi, 60, is currently Iran’s Minister of Justice. He was appointed by Khamenei more than two decades ago after a long report on his loyalty to Tehran and human rights violations.
However, Goudarzi is not alone in caring for the painful memories associated with Raisi.
Meanwhile, 59-year-old Mahmoud Royaie was born in a middle-class family in Tehran in 1963. When the king was overthrown, he was only 15 years old and soon found himself immersed in opposition politics. On August 30, 1981, he was dragged away by the authorities while walking on the street, and was immediately taken to the torture chamber without any due process.
“We were forced to stand in the corridor, and you could only hear the screams of the tortured people-I remember the screams of the women who were severely beaten and raped by the kidnappers,” he said. “I have never heard of such a thing. All I can do is wait.”
Also under the guidance of Lacey and his partners, Luo Yayi recalled being pushed face down on the tortured bench, his hands and feet stretched out and bound, his eyes covered by thick black eye masks.
When the rope binding became unbearable, he said that a foul-smelling, blood-soaked cloth was stuffed into his mouth.
“All cables have different thicknesses-these guards know exactly which will shock you and which will cause a burning sensation. They are very skilled at what they do,” Royaie continued, noting that he ended up in “Kangaroo Court” “Sentenced to 10 years in prison. “As soon as I went to prison, the authorities shaved my head and eyebrows and forced me to eat. It was all under Ebrahim Raisi.”
Raisi was born in 1960 in the once prestigious city of Mashhad in the northeastern part of the Silk Road. He began to study as a priest in the holy city of Qom at the age of 15 and joined the regime’s judicial branch as a teenager. After the 1979 revolution, when he was only 19 years old, he started working as an assistant prosecutor in Karaj on the edge of Tehran, even though he had no university education. Extremely hardline conservatives rose rapidly in the 1980s, serving as chief prosecutor of the clergy, member of the expert assembly and expedient committee, and deputy prosecutor of the Tehran Revolutionary Court in the 1980s.
Jim Phillips, a senior researcher on Middle East affairs at the Heritage Foundation, said: “Raisi is a disciple of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei. He trusts the Western Conference to protect and continue his own revolutionary legacy.” “He is a serial human rights abuser. He participated in the mass murder of political dissidents in 1988, when he played an important role in a group that sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death.”
In 1988, he was one of only four people elected by the then Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — later known as the “Death Committee” — to execute the creepy Instructed to carry out the massacre and summarily executed more than 30,000 political prisoners like Goudarzi and Royaie. Most of the victims are associated with the Iranian People’s Jihad (PMOI/MEK), and Tehran continues to regard it as a terrorist organization because of its long-term resistance to the government.
In the 1990s and 2000s, devout regime loyalists were assigned to several influential positions, from the head of the organization of inspectors to the attorney general of Iran. In 2016, Raisi became the leader of the powerful religious foundation Astan Quds Razavi, the sacred place of Imam Reza-according to the decimal Shia, this is the eighth successor of the Prophet.
Raisi ran for president under Khamenei’s faction in 2017, but unexpectedly lost to the outgoing Hasan Rouhani.
However, this time, observers emphasized that all potential competitors have been eliminated. Those who were deemed insufficiently responsible for the religious system were disqualified.
In March 2019, Khamenei chose Raisi as Iran’s Minister of Justice, and it is believed that he ordered more than 500 executions in his first two years alone. According to reports, Iran’s total number of executions per year is second only to China. Nonetheless, critics say that people without documentation are more likely to fall into dark shadows. Iran remains one of only seven countries known to impose the death penalty on children.
“Iran is a heavy user of the death penalty, including crimes such as drug smuggling. In Iran, politically sensitive trials sometimes only last about 20 minutes, and the defendant is even deprived of basic rights, such as qualified representatives,” Iranian expert and John John Allen Guy, executive director of the Quincy Adams Association pointed out. “Iran’s judiciary has played a key role in detaining dissidents and dual nationals on fabricated or fabricated charges.”
In addition, the prominent role and public claims of “eliminating corruption” enable Raisi to reduce possible presidential opponents to prepare for the next election cycle.
But although the Biden administration has been working hard to rejoin the Obama-era JCPOA, the “Iran Nuclear Agreement” that President Trump unceremoniously withdrew more than three years ago, Lacey is almost certain to ascend the presidency. A major blow.
Raisi is a figure hostile to the West and a staunch opponent of such concessions.
“Ressie may reject the relative pragmatism of the current President Rouhani, increase the power and influence of the Revolutionary Guard, and take a more confrontational stance on many foreign policy issues,” Phillips predicted. “He may not be as easy to deal with the nuclear issue as Rouhani, but in any case, in addition to other important issues, the supreme leader will still give orders.”
In addition, Lacey’s presidency may consolidate the power of hardliners to lead all government departments. Phillips pointed out that although the Iranian president has relatively limited power in the Iranian political system and plays a secondary role after the supreme leader, the presidency is an important stepping stone.
The supreme leader and dozens of senior Iranian officials and foreign dignitaries attended Tuesday’s inauguration. Raisi will be formally sworn in as President in Parliament on Thursday. Raisi vowed to restore his “trust” with the troubled Iranian people. In the long-term COVID-19 pandemic, the economy has been hit hard and the healthcare system has been overwhelmed. However, with a hard-line attitude and unforgettable history, this kind of reconciliation is probably just an imaginary concept.
In the end-it is the Iranian people themselves who are prepared to suffer.
“As a hardliner, Raisi is committed to upholding the repressive Islamic ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” added Jordan Steckler, a research analyst with United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). “Tehran continues Against political dissidents Executing the death penalty with ethnic minorities, religious and sexual minorities, and still executing the death penalty on minors. The regime further deprived the Iranian people of their freedom of speech, assembly and press. In addition, since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, it has brutally suppressed every major protest movement. At every stage, Lai Xi is a party to Iran’s systematic human rights violations. “
