‘Butcher of Teheran’ mourned by UN Security Council, NATO, EU

by WorldTribune Staff, May 20, 2024 Contract With Our Readers

NATO, the European Union, the UN Security Council, and a number of world leaders lined up to offer condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials were been found dead at the site of a helicopter crash on Sunday after an hours-long search through a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s northwest, state media reported.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi

First, here is Tablet Magazine’s description from 2021 of who Raisi really was:

“Most notably, though, Raisi was one of four members of a death committee responsible for the 1988 execution of thousands of Iranian prisoners of conscience in the space of a few months. The ideologically motivated mass executions constituted both a crime against humanity and genocide — a cleansing of religious infidels — according to international human rights expert Geoffrey Robertson. It was a massacre, he says, comparable to those at Srebrenica and the Katyn Forest.

“Raisi would typically spend only a few minutes with each prisoner—some young children — asking them questions to test their allegiance to radical Islam. The prisoners, mostly leftist revolutionaries who had helped bring the regime to power, typically refused to feign loyalty, even after prolonged and brutal torture, which in some cases was personally directed and overseen by Raisi. It is estimated that a minimum of a few thousand and as many as 30,000 were killed by hanging or firing squad. The massacre is still shrouded in secrecy, with the regime continuing to deny information to the families of those killed, including about the location of their loved ones’ remains.

“What is known is the speed and efficiency of killing, with hangings using forklifts every half hour, and the dumping of dead bodies in piles on trucks, a method and pace that traumatized the executioners themselves. Virgins were systematically raped before their execution, to circumvent the Islamic prohibition on killing virgins and to prevent women and girls from reaching heaven. The executed were ordered to write their own names on their hands before they went to their death. The massacre is a trauma etched into the collective consciousness of all of the Iranian people, throughout the country and throughout the diaspora.

“At the time, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had been designated to succeed the revolutionary leader Khomeini, condemned the mass executions in an act of dissent. In response, Khomeini rescinded Montazeri’s clerical rank, canceled his selection as the next supreme leader, and condemned him to house arrest. In Montazeri’s place, Raisi rose up.”

The Biden administration on Monday extended its “official condolences” for the death of Raisi, according to a statement from the State Department. “As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” said department spokesman Matthew Miller.

And, now, here’s NATO offering its condolences:

Not to be outdone, the United Nations Security Council held a moment of silence to mourn Raisi’s passing:

Charles Michel, President of the European Council, extended the EU’s “sincere” condolences:

HotAir’s David Strom noted: “Perhaps it is considered pro forma to pretend to mourn the death of a world leader who was an evil butcher of innocents, but if so it is an appalling tradition. Some people’s deaths should be celebrated or at least ignored. Certainly the leaders of Western countries shouldn’t be expressing #solidarity with one of the worst human beings on the planet.”

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