Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the execution of 59 young men from Mahabad by the Islamic Republic of Iran. On June 2, 1983, according to a statement by the then-governor of Mahabad, Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, 59 citizens of Mahabad were executed for alleged “connections with counter-revolutionary parties.”
According to Hana’s research, these 59 Mahabad citizens were collectively arrested by government forces in late 1982 and early 1983 and transferred to Orumiyeh Prison. These arrests were part of a broader campaign of repression that followed Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa declaring jihad against the people of Kurdistan, which was implemented in various Kurdish cities. In the violent confrontations between Kurdish parties and the government’s invading forces, Mohammad Boroujerdi, then-commander of the IRGC’s Hamzeh Headquarters, was killed in armed clashes with Kurdish opposition groups. Based on available evidence and documentation, government forces—motivated by revenge—decided to hastily execute a number of Kurdish political prisoners.
Accordingly, 59 Mahabad prisoners held in Orumiyeh were transferred to the city of Tabriz. These individuals were sentenced to death by the judges of the Tabriz Revolutionary Court without any of the guarantees of a fair trial or access to legal defense. Their sentences were swiftly and secretly carried out.
According to documents obtained and testimonies from the families of those executed, the majority of the victims were under 18 years of age and thus, by legal definition, were children at the time their lives were taken. The victims of this atrocity were denied even the most basic rights of the accused, such as access to legal counsel or representation. To this day, the Islamic Republic has not released any documents detailing their trials or the procedures of their executions. Despite years of inquiries and appeals by the victims’ families to various institutions, they still have no information about the whereabouts of the bodies or the burial sites.
Under international criminal law, such mass executions—carried out with specific criminal intent and systematically by state officials—constitute crimes against humanity. Moreover, the continued refusal to return the bodies or reveal their burial sites constitutes a separate and ongoing international crime. Among those who orchestrated and carried out this crime, Ebrahim Sanjaghi, a senior IRGC commander and current president of Malek Ashtar University, and Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, then-governor and head of Mahabad’s Security Council, are still alive. They are subject to prosecution under the principle of universal jurisdiction in European countries whose legal systems allow for such prosecution.
The Hana Human Rights Organization expresses its solidarity with the families of the victims and calls for the international prosecution of those responsible, in accordance with the principle of universal jurisdiction. Under this principle, states are authorized to investigate and prosecute heinous crimes such as crimes against humanity regardless of where they occurred or the nationality of the perpetrators.
Hana Human Rights Organization
June 2, 2025