By Maziar
Behrooz, Assistant Professor, San
Francisco
State
University
Source: This article was originally
published in the MIT Iran Analysis
Quarterly Vol.2 No. 3 Winter 2005
Note: The original
draft of this paper, titled "Perspectives on Iran's Political Prisoners during
the Montazeri Years (1985-88)," was presented at the Middle East Studies
Association (MESA) panel, "Responses to State Terror: Twentieth-Century Iran's
Political Prisoners," San Francisco, November 20-23, 2004.
Introduction
Events of June 1981
were a turning point in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). It was during this period that the
cleric-dominated faction within the ruling elite of the IRI moved to eliminate
both its opposition outside the state apparatus and its factional opposition,
commonly called the "Islamic liberals" (led by President Abol Hasan Bani-sadr in
1981). The period immediately
following June 1981 was both one of consolidation for the IRI under a more
homogeneous cleric-dominated leadership and one of the harshest and most violent
periods in recent Iranian history.
While at war with Iraq and in a continuing confrontational
mode with the U.S., the IRI under the leadership of
Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was, in effect, attempting to bring about
uniformity in its leadership and to consolidate power by eliminating all
opposition.
In this context,
almost the entire political opposition (be they leftist communists, Moslem
radicals, or Islamic liberals) were taken on in an often violent, sometimes
civil-war-like, confrontation. The
violence of 1981-1988 is best reflected in the IRI prison system, where
thousands, if not tens of thousands, of men and women perished. The end of this period saw the general
massacre of prisoners in the summer of 1988 as the Iran-Iraq war came to an end,
a year before Khomeini's demise.
During 1981-1988, a
reemergence of factionalism and the role played by Khomeini's heir apparent,
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, had a significant consequence for the
lives of thousands of prisoners.
This paper discusses the role of factionalism and that of Montazeri
during this period and examines improvements, if any, in prison conditions
during Montazeri's tenure, as well as the calamities prisoners faced after his
removal.
Factionalism in
IRI
While the attempt
to consolidate the IRI was, for the most part, realized, the hope of
establishing a more homogeneous leadership proved to be more challenging and
ultimately elusive . Shortly after 1981, and as soon as it
became clear that the opposition was effectively neutralized, the
cleric-dominated coalition which had closed ranks behind Khomeini began to
polarize. By the time Khomeini died
in 1989, three distinguishable factions had fully developed. The three differed on a range of
domestic and foreign policy issues.
In brief, the first
was the radical/left faction, which advocated a stronger role for the state in
domestic policies and a more radical, confrontational foreign policy, especially
when it came to the U.S. This faction generally had the upper
hand as long as the Iran-Iraq war was going on. Second was the
pragmatic/moderate faction, which advocated a lessening of the state role in
domestic matters and normalizing Iran's foreign relations so as to
achieve domestic growth, particularly as the war years came to an end. The reform movement of the late 1990s
emerged from elements belonging to these two factions. Third was the right/conservative
faction, which advocated a limited state role in regulating domestic economic
matters, represented the bazaar merchant class interest, advocated a strong
state role in imposing Islamic moral codes, and envisioned a more isolationist
foreign policy.
The three factions
also shared a clear contempt for political democracy and were in accord when it
came to eliminating the opposition.
Khomeini was fully aware of the factions and played them against each
other to maintain balance. However,
toward the end of his life he clearly sided with the left faction on most issues
(1).
Montazeri
By the 1980s, Grand
Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was already considered an old hand
revolutionary, a student and confidant of Khomeini from before the revolution,
and one of the architects of the IRI after 1979. Because of his age, his seminary
education and status as a mujtahed
(learned religious scholar able to issue independent judgments on religious
subjects), and his revolutionary credentials, Montazeri soon found a prominent
place in the hierarchy of the IRI.
He was designated to become the successor to Khomeini in November 1985, a
status he held until his dismissal in March 1989.
Montazeri's
selection as heir apparent posed some problems and was clearly a political
step. Although a mujtahed with impeccable revolutionary
credentials, he was not considered a marja' (source of imitation/grand
ayatollah) at the time of his selection, which was a constitutional prerequisite
for becoming the leader of the IRI (this constitutional prerequisite was removed
in the summer of 1989 after Khomeini's death). Hence, in the months leading to his
selection, a considerable effort was made to elevate his position to an
acceptable level.
Montazeri was
viewed as a person who would follow Khomeini's path and ensure clerical
continuity in the IRI's leadership.
But between 1985 and 1989 he came into open conflict with his former
teacher and leader, resulting in his removal.
Like Khomeini,
Montazeri attempted to stay above factional politics, but even more than
Khomeini, and much earlier, he tended to lean toward the left faction,
especially on foreign policy matters.
On other issues, he maintained his own independent line and was quite
vocal about it. As a no-nonsense
straight-shooter, Montazeri often offended IRI officials, including Khomeini,
with his criticism. His dismissal
was due to a number of interconnected issues ranging from his opposition to the
1986 Iran-Contra affair, aspects of the IRI's foreign policy, the conduct of the
war with Iraq, constitutional changes put forward by Khomeini in 1988-89, and
power struggle with Khomeini's son and the head of his household, Ahmad, who led
a power center by virtue of his access to his father.
Another area where
Montazeri came into conflict with Khomeini was the IRI's human rights record and
the issue of freedom of expression.
Indeed, on the former he was accused of paying too much attention to
reports of Amnesty International, and on the latter issue, of getting too close
to Islamic liberals (led by Mehdi Bazargan and considered a semi-legal
opposition group in 1989).
The IRI
Judiciary
Following the
repression of June 1981, the IRI's judiciary was faced with an overwhelming
number of detainees belonging to a variety of political oppositional
groups. To put the problem simply,
the judiciary was overloaded, and immediate relief or improvisation was
required.
The 1981 crackdown
occurred little more than two years after the victory of the revolution and at a
time when the IRI was just beginning to reorganize the state system. If one takes into consideration that
even today, some twenty-five years after the revolution, the IRI judicial system
is still chaotic and leaves much to be desired, one can imagine how bad the
conditions were at this infantile stage.
There were two core
problems. First, as an Islamic republic, the IRI claimed to seek to bring about
Islamic justice. Naturally, here the judiciary played a central role in
administering "judicial" justice.
Islamic justice meant, in part, purging the Iranian law code of its
Western influence and secular past and replacing it with Shari'a-based
laws. This process was at an early
stage and no coherent and uniform system was yet in place. By the middle of 1981, the fact that the
country was in the middle of both a civil and a foreign war, as well as the
usual post-revolution disorder, only compounded the
problem.
The second problem,
closely associated with the above, was an acute lack of competent judges to
administer justice. Ideally, in a
Shari'a-based legal system, competent clerics would be in charge of courts and
administration of justice. In
reality, it had been a long time since Shi'a clerics had played any role in
Iran's judiciary, a function they were
in charge of until the early 1930s.
Hence, while Shi'a seminaries in
Iran had been training competent clerics
during the fifty years before the revolution, they had not been producing enough
judges for the task at hand.
Ideally, Shi'a clerics who had become mujtaheds would be in charge of
judicial and other duties such as teaching. Those among the clerics who were not
mujtaheds would attend to less intellectually oriented occupations such as
preaching, notarizing, managing village mosques, etc. Since no judges were needed during fifty
years of secularizing reforms by Pahlavi shahs, fewer graduates had been
produced and they attended to other tasks.
In 1981, with an
acute shortage of competent judges, many non-mujtaheds were recruited to run the
courts, and in the absence of uniform legal codes, they began to issue rulings
as they saw fit. The incompetence
of most judges and their revolutionary/religious zeal resulted in
catastrophe. Chaos, arbitrariness,
and large numbers of executions and numerous other human rights violations
followed. The situation got so bad
that the ruling clerics took notice.
In his memoirs
Montazeri mentions the problem and steps taken to remedy the situation (2). It
seems that sometime after 1983 Khomeini was approached and asked to take action
regarding arbitrary executions going on in the prisons. Khomeini in turn asked Montazeri to look
into the problem. According to
Montazeri, the problem was twofold.
First, because of general disorganization and localism of the courts, not
only were arbitrary death sentences issued, but on many occasions people who had
committed similar crimes received such different sentences as short prison terms
and capital punishment, depending on the judge (3). The second problem was more
technical in nature and centered around who would be liable to capital
punishment. The key concepts in
dispute were "war against God" (harb)
and "corrupter on earth" (mufsed-e fi
al-arz) (4). Many judges
interpreted any act of "war against God" as well as any "corrupting act" as
being those of a "corrupter on earth" and issued death sentences.
It is worth noting
that by the time Montazeri got involved in this process, thousands of people had
already been "administered justice" under the above circumstances. Montazri's reforms in this regard were
simple and swift. He issued a legal
ruling stating that not all "corrupters" are to be considered "corrupters on
earth," thus making them ineligible for capital punishment. He also argued, as will be explained
below, that only male, not female, prisoners found to be in a state of "war with
God" were subject to capital punishment.
Furthermore, in
1983 Montazeri suggested and led the way to establish a central court in
Qum called the
Sublime
Court (dadgah-e ali) to review most capital
punishment cases. This process
resulted in a decrease in capital cases as the Qum court was under Montazeri's
influence and did not issue execution sentences for many women prisoners, the
youth, and those who did not have a direct hand in assassinations (5).
IRI Security and Prison
System
The IRI's prison
system faced overload problems similar to those mentioned above, only here the
situation was much worse. According
to Hosein Musavi-tabrizi, the Revolutionary Prosecutor-General 1981-83, not only
were there not adequate facilities to house thousands of newly arriving
prisoners, but many prisoners disappeared and were killed even before court
hearings, some not even being registered.
In addition, torture and long captivity without any judicial process, or
continued captivity after serving one's sentence, had now become the norm.
(6)
According to
Tabrizi, in September 1981 when he took office, following the assassination of
his predecessor, both the security forces and the prison system were in a dire
condition. As far as the security
forces were concerned, the problem proved easier to solve. Apparently, according to Tabrizi,
various security forces (including the IRGC, police, revolutionary Komitehs,
security forces associated with the Prosecutor General's Office, and other
branches) acted independently of each other, at times competing with each other
or even shooting each other mistakenly during street patrols. This problem was solved by establishing
a central command for coordination, as well as taking other steps. This process eventually led to the 1984
establishment of the Intelligence Ministry of the IRI and consolidation of all
police forces in one national organization under the State Ministry (sometimes
interpreted as Interior Ministry)
in the 1990s.
A solution to the
problem of prisons proved to be more elusive. As with the security forces, there was
no central coordinating organization in 1981. What existed was a collection of prisons
left from the shah's time, each controlled by a different security
organization. The person in charge
until 1985 of the IRI's largest prison, Evin in
Tehran, was Asadollah Lajevardi, by any
measure a brutal administrator with a special security squad under his command
operating out of Evin. Lajevard was
himself an ex-political prisoner and a person closely associated with the
right/conservative faction. His
control over the most important and largest prison facility pointed to the right
faction's dominance over the fate of most political prisoners.
Tabrizi notes that
in the midst of near-civil war conditions, the problem of dealing with the
opposition was compounded by arbitrary arrests and killings done on Lajevardi's
watch. The situation got so bad
that reports reached Khomeini, who appointed three parliament members to look
into the problem. Their advice and
that of Tabrizi was to remove Lajevardi.
Apparently the right faction managed to convince Khomeini not to go ahead
with the dismissal, but he did ask Tabrizi to watch over Lajevardi
(7).
Montazeri and
the Prison System:
This was the
general situation in which Montazeri took on overall management of IRI's prison
system by appointing his people to run it, a process that in part led to his
confrontation with Khomeini. The
office of Montazeri, the heir apparent, soon became a place which people who
were not otherwise able to reach authorities and seek justice, flooded with
complaints. Even many officials who
were unable to approach Khomeini for a variety of reasons sought Montazeri's
intervention. Montazeri intervened
on many occasions by writing letters to officials, by appointing his people to
oversee duties, and by directly approaching Khomeini and discussing the problem
in a no-nonsense manner.
According to
Montazeri, he approached Khomeini with the complaint that many excesses were
going on in the prisons even years after the opposition had been effectively
neutralized. These included continued summary executions, torture (in the guise
of Shari'a punishment or ta'zir) for
information, but more commonly as a form of punishment and for repentance, long
unnecessary sentences, and refusal to release prisoners after the end of their
terms (8).
Another topic the
two men discussed was execution of female prisoners. Montazeri believed that according to
theShari'a only those women who had been directly involved in killing were
liable to capital punishment. He
proposed reducing sentences, and not implementing capital punishment, for those
women who were deemed to be in a "state of war with God" but had not been
directly involved in any killing. (9)
Interestingly,
Khomeini, who would order the general killing of prisoners in the summer of
1988, apparently agreed with all of Montazeri's suggestions and asked him to
take charge. Montazeri had been
paying attention to prison conditions years before he became heir apparent. It appears he had been collecting
information on prison conditions and trying to restrain brutalization of
prisoners even in the heat of conflict with the opposition. The following episode is telling: after
the fall 1981 assassination of a top cleric named Ayatollah Dastghaib in
Shiraz, prison guards stormed the prison
quarters of Evin. Their presence
was unusual in that they all looked angry, were in large numbers, and carried
their weapons with them. Prison
guards apparently did not normally carry their weapons among the prison
population for fear of being disarmed.
The above circumstance gave the appearance that prisoners were going to
be shot en masse at any moment. But then a live broadcast from Montazeri
over radio pleaded for restraint, after which things began to calm down
(10).
On another
occasion, a political prisoner on a hospital bed in Evin was surprised when a
member of the Revolutionary Guards approached him in late 1985 asking him about
prison conditions. When asked who
he was and why he was asking a prisoner such questions, he said that he worked
with the office of Montazeri and that they had no access to the prisons and did
not know what went on.
In 1985 Montazeri
took charge by ordering a halt to execution of women prisoners who had not been
directly involved in any killing,
and appointed a council of amnesty to look into cases which were eligible
for release. He also initiated the
creation of the IRI Organization of Prisons and began to appoint his people to
oversee running of the prisons, starting with the dismissal of Lajevardi. The
latter apparently left his post after executing close to twenty-five hundred
prisoners who had already repented and were cooperating with him
(11).
According to most
accounts, the general condition of prisons began to improve from 1985 to the
summer of 1988. Among measures
taken were: sharp reduction in executions; release of many prisoners; general
improvement of prison conditions (recreation, availability of books, family
visits), and reduction in solitary confinement; lessening of torture as a form
of punishment; abolition of compulsory ideological
classes.
A positive change
in the condition of prisons throughout
Iran had begun to take shape. More than a few ex-political prisoners
have suggested that their lives were saved after Montazeri took over (12). There
have been over a dozen memoirs written by former political prisoners of these
years. While some authors either do
not mention the changes in prison conditions or dismiss them as cosmetic, others
have taken notice. After
acknowledging the changes, Shahrnush Parsipur, a prominent woman novelist and
ex-prisoner, wrote: "Hence, it became clear that recent [prison] reforms had
occurred under the supervision of Ayatollah Montazeri's office. I am not well versed in factional
infighting among these gentlemen, but during the last year to year-and-a-half of
prison, when these people took over, the conditions of prison changed one
hundred eighty degrees" (13).
Another female prisoner, Monireh Baradaran, also acknowledges the
difference Montazeri made (14).
Thus, Montazeri's
domination of the IRI judiciary and prison system signaled a period of visible
and significant relaxation of, but not a complete end to, terror in IRI
prisons. His attempt was to set the
stage for creating institutions, cultural imperatives, and a legal context to
serve Islamic justice and protect the revolution at the same time. Those who were guilty were to be
punished and then be sent on their way.
This period ended when he lost his control over these institutions,
resulting in a swift return of terror.
By the summer of
1988, Montazeri was out of the picture as far as the prison system was
concerned. Following the end of the
Iran-Iraq war, in the summer of 1988, orders were issued to execute those
prisoners who were guilty and beyond redemption and to free others. In the coming months, more than 4,500
prisoners were killed. A majority
of these had already received
prison sentences and/or had served their sentence and were eligible for
release. Probably another 15,000
prisoners were eventually released (15).
Different people in
Iran began to actively oppose the
executions and voice their concern.
One such group was the Liberation Movement of former Prime Minister Mehdi
Bazargan, who had been out of favor and marginalized by Khomeini. Montazeri joined these voices by sending
messages and writing letters to Khomeini.
He was accused of being naïve, of collaboration with Bazargan, and of
being too impressionable and under the influence of foreign human rights
groups. In one of Khomeini's last
speeches in March 1989, he attacked those who have been fooled by the liberals
and the hypocrites (the latter a standard IRI reference to the Mojahedin), a
clear reference to Montazeri and a popular line of attack on him from this point
on (16). Without Montazeri's intervention and objections, the extent of the
terror going on in the prisons probably would not have become internationally
known. The end result of this
process was the March 1989 "resignation" (or removal) of Montazeri and the
beginning of his marginalization and house arrests.
Conclusion:
Why did Montazeri
act the way he did? After all, he
was a staunch supporter of the revolution and an architect of the IRI
constitution, a defender of the repression in 1981, a father who had lost a son
to assassins, and a close confidant and student of Khomeini. In his last letter to Montazeri
accepting his "resignation," Khomeini referred to his former protégé as "the
fruit of my life," pointing to the painful rift between the two men
(17).
At the point of his
dismissal Montazeri was one of the most powerful men in
Iran, with impeccable political and
religious credentials. As
Khomeini's heir apparent he could have kept quiet until he had become the
all-powerful leader of the IRI.
The answer seems to
be in his personality, the place he envisioned for himself in the revolution,
and his perception of what an Islamic society should look like and how an
Islamic state should behave.
Montazeri was not a
power-hungry political activist who would sacrifice all else for the sake of
holding on to power. That is a
malady that has gripped many revolutionaries, and the Iranian revolutionaries
were no exception. Montazeri was and is an idealist for whom power is for the
sake of justice, fairness, and morality in an Islamic context, as he envisions
it. If the reality of the
revolution was telling him otherwise, then it was the revolution, and not his
perception of Islam -- his principles -- that had to give
way.
It is true that he
supported the repression of the early 1980s, but he also began to oppose what he
considered the excesses of the revolution from an early stage. Perhaps only a few revolutionaries in
history, or perhaps many, reach this pivotal crossroad. Hunger for power or the old craving for
your principles -- which one would it be?
As a well-placed
and important pillar of the revolution, Montazeri's office was soon flooded with
complaints from all those who had nowhere else to turn. Montazeri in effect became a path
through which these excesses were brought under a degree of control. His removal reinstituted terror and
nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the prison
system.
His perception of
Islamic justice ran counter to those who insisted on deepening the
repression. His tenure represented
a relative pause in the terror. To
Montazeri, terror was permissible not to seek revenge but only to save the
system, administer justice, clear the innocent, and move on. Mass killing of prisoners, killing those
who had been given light sentences, use of torture and demands for repentance,
and making life miserable for prisoners were not part of his vision of Islamic
justice.
Perhaps there is
another aspect to this problem.
Institutionalization of illegality, of arbitrariness, and of terror can
ultimately serve to damage revolutionary ideals. Under such circumstances, the prison
wardens of today could easily become the prisoners of tomorrow. To prevent this, institutionalization of
legality is an imperative. One can
clearly sense an attempt by Montazeri to establish the rule of law (based on
Shari'a) as he tried to prevent excesses.
Finally, it is not
surprising that Iran's reform movement today is closely
identified with Montazeri. It is
true that none of the factions of the 1980s within the IRI even mentioned civil
society, individual freedom, freedom of expression, and democracy as they are
known in the West. But it is also
true that faint voices from among the ruling factions, demanding and insisting
on the rule of law and an end to arbitrariness and terror, began at this
point.
_______
Notes
1) For more on factional politics in
the IRI see Mehdi Moslem, Factional
Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse, NY, 2002).
2) Hosein Ali Montazeri, Khaterat [Memoirs]
(Tehran, 2000), 311.
3) Ibid., 308.
4) Ibid., 298.
5) This was the assessment of a
former political prisoner, Reza Fani-yazdi (interview with author,
Berkeley, CA, November
13, 2004).
6) Interview with Ayatollah Sayyed
Hosein Musavi-tabrizi, Chashmandaz
(Tehran), No. 22 (September-October 2003),
41.
7) Ibid.
8) One former political prisoner,
who has to remain anonymous, told this author that when he asked his captors
what were the criteria for implementation of ta'zir (i.e., beating prisoners), the
answer was that it was implemented when a prisoner lied about a certain
question; of course, as I was told, that was only one criterion among many
(anonymous, telephone interview with author, Berkeley, CA, March 29,
2005).
9) Montazeri, Khaterat [Memoirs]
(Tehran, 2000), 309,
378.
10) Anonymous former political
prisoner.
11) Ibid. This is the source for
both the account of the encounter with the guard in Evin hospital and the rough
estimate of those executed by Lajevardi.
12) Both the anonymous former
political prisoner and Reza Fani-yazdi, as well as another former prisoner,
Hamid Karamyar (interview with author, Berkeley, CA, January
29, 2005),
attested to this observation.
13) Shahrnush Parsipur, Khaterat-e Zendan [Prison Memoirs]
(Sweden, 1996), 355.
14) Monireh Baradaran (M. Raha), Haqiqat-e Sadeh [Simple Truth]
(Hannover, Germany, 1997), 163.
15) The number of executed prisoners
is based on a list provided by a number of exiled political opposition
organizations. See Anan keh Goftand
Na [Those Who Said No] (Paris, 1999); the number of freed
prisoners is a rough estimate based on interviews
conducted.
16) The text of Khomeini's speech
can be found in the following: Mohammad Mohammadi-reyshahri, Khaterat-e Siyasi 1365-66 [Political
Memoir 1986-87] (Tehran, 1990), 289.
17) Ibid., 292.
About the
Author
Maziar Behrooz was born in 1959 in Tehran-Iran and
currently is Assistant Professor of Middle East history at
San
Francisco State University. He is the author of Rebels With a Cause:
The failure of the Left in Iran (1999) and Ta'amolati Piramun-e
Tarikh Shureshiyan Armankhah [Perspectives on the History of Rebels With a
Cause] (Forthcoming, 2005), as well as many articles and book chapters on the
modern history of Iran.
... Payvand News - 5/23/05 ... --
|
