Iranian hard-line judiciary chief seeks presidency

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The hard-line cleric in charge of Iran’s judiciary who also took part in a panel involved in the mass execution of thousands of prisoners in 1988 registered Saturday to run for the country’s presidency.

Ebrahim Raisi has been named as a possible successor to Iran’s 82-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leading some to suggest he wouldn’t run in the race. However, his registration shows he still has interest in the office he failed to obtain in 2017.

His close ties to Khamenei and popularity in part from his televised anti-corruption campaign could make him a favorite in an election in which analysts already believe that hard-liners enjoy an edge. A crush of journalists followed Raisi through the Interior Ministry as he registered, the 60year-old cleric waving to staff members as he passed.

In a statement just before his registration, Raisi promised to fight “poverty and corruption, humiliation and discrimination” if he becomes president. He added that his tenure in office would seek to have a “popular administration for a powerful Iran,” a dig at Iran’s current president, the relatively moderate Hassan Rouhani.

Activists, however, hold a far different view of Raisi over his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of prisoners at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq. After Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin Khalq, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack.

Iran ultimately blunted the assault, but the attack set the stage for the sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as “death commissions.” Some who appeared were asked to identify themselves. Those who responded “mujahedin” were sent to their deaths, while others were questioned about their willingness to “clear minefields for the army of the Islamic Republic,” according to a 1990 Amnesty International report.

International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed, while Mujahedin Khalq puts the number at 30,000. Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out on Khomeini’s orders, though some argue that other top officials were effectively in charge in the months before his 1989 death.

Raisi reportedly served on a panel involved in sentencing the prisoners to death.

In 2016, members of the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri’s family put out an audio recording of him criticizing the executions as “the biggest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic.”

Raisi has never publicly acknowledged his role in the executions, even while campaigning for president in 2017. He ultimately lost to Rouhani, though he still garnered nearly 16 million votes in his campaign. Khamenei appointed him as head of the judiciary in 2019.