Asghar Mehdizadeh was a political prisoner and spent 13 years in Iran’s prisons. Mr. Mehdizadeh is one of the witnesses of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran.
From the beginning of 1982, Asghar Mehdizadeh was imprisoned as a political prisoner in Iran, where he bore witness to the brutal tortures and executions at the hands of the Iranian regime. He recalled in great detail of the events of the summer of 1988, where 30,000 political prisoners were sentenced to be executed in minute long trials for being allied with the Iranian Resistance movement.
Mehdizadeh was imprisoned for 13 years at Gohardasht prison, during which time he was subjected to brutal torture and mistreatment for being a member of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
In the summer of 1988, then-Supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, declaring MEK supporters as ‘enemies of God’ and ordering them to be executed. Panels of clerics and judiciary officials, known as ‘Death commissions’, were set up to implement this fatwa across Iran.