A Brief History of the 'Butcher of Tehran'
Raisi started his career in 1981 as the prosecutor of Karaj and Hamadan Provinces. He played a leading role in persecuting minorities, especially the Bahais, and political opponents that left untold numbers dead, tortured, and jailed. Upon moving to Tehran as the deputy prosecutor, Raisi served as a member of the so-called "Death Committees," created by the notorious Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali (aka the "hanging judge"). In 1988, Raisi was directly implicated in executing some eight thousand political prisoners who had already served non-capital sentences. The highly respected international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who investigated the massacre, found it to be "the second-worst violation of prisoners' rights since the end of World War II, superseded only by the mass killing in Srebrenica, Bosnia, and Herzegovina."
In a 2018 interview, Raisi defended his role in "fighting the enemies of the state," prompting two leading human rights groups, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to call for an investigation of Raisi for crimes against humanity of "mass murder, enforced disappearance, and torture" under international law.
Raisi's decades-long judicial career involved Islamic Revolutionary Courts (IRC) founded by Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini in 1979 to fight a range of offenses from drug trafficking to blasphemy to crimes against the vaguely defined "security of the state." Raisi's close relations with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son Mujtaba,who unofficially runs the security apparatus,elevated him to the position of deputy chief justice between 2004 and 2014. During his 10-year tenure on the bench, Iran experienced a marked deterioration in human rights and religious freedoms. On the advice of the intelligence unit of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and the Quds Force (IRGC-QF) intelligence unit, Raisi punished political opponents of the regime and dissidents. He accepted forced confessions obtained under torture as evidence in court and took a very strong position against women who defied modesty ordinances, including veiling.
As the deputy chief justice, Raisi helped to launch a hostage-diplomacy program. Desperate to release its operatives who were jailed in the West, the Guards and Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) targeted dual-nationals and foreigners for a possible exchange. They were seized, tortured into making false confessions, and brought before the IRC. Four of Raisi's appointed judges—Abolghassem Salavati, Mohammad Moghiseh, Yahya Pirabbasi, and Hassan Zareh Dehnavi—were known for conducting trials for foreigners and dual nations and sentencing them to long-term prison stays. Some 35 Westerners, among them 17 Americans, were arrested on trumped-up charges such as espionage, crimes against national security, and crimes that undermine the Islamic Republic during his tenure. Many were later exchanged for regime operatives in Western jails. Raisi's subsequent appointments as attorney general (2014 to 2016) and supreme court justice (2019 to 2021) virtually assured the hardline position of the IRCs and perpetuated the abhorrent practice.
https://www.newsweek.com/brief-history-butcher-tehran-opinion-1742127l
