A complaint filed in Switzerland on Monday (December 11th) calls on the authorities to arrest the Iranian president during his planned trip to Geneva this week and to charge him with crimes against humanity for the mass executions of opponents in 1988. Ebrahim Raisi is due to attend the UN Global Refugee Forum, which takes place from 13 to 15 December.
The complaint, a copy of which was seen by AFP and dated Monday, calls on the Attorney General of Switzerland Andreas Muller to arrest and charge him "for his participation in acts of genocide, torture, extrajudicial executions and other crimes against humanity". It was filed by three former Iranian prisoners.
Human rights groups have long campaigned for justice for the thousands of extrajudicial executions in Iranian prisons in the summer of 1988, just after the Iraq war.
'Death Commission'
The victims were mainly supporters of the banned People's Mojahedin (MEK) movement, which had supported Baghdad during the conflict. The plaintiffs say they can personally identify the Iranian president as a member of the "death commission" that ordered the executions.
The lead plaintiff, Reza Shemirani, was arrested in 1981 and is one of about 150 prisoners out of 5000,1991 inmates in his prison who survived the purge, according to the complaint. He remained there until <>, being tortured on a daily basis. Exiled Iranian opponents have already filed similar complaints in the United Kingdom and New York.
Alongside this legal complaint, an international campaign was launched to protest the Iranian president's presence at the Refugee Forum and demand that he be prosecuted.
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His presence at the UN forum is at odds with the fundamental values that the UN stands for," said a petition that has garnered more than 200 signatures from figures such as Nobel laureates, judges, former ministers, parliamentarians, academics and UN human rights experts.