The Iranian Supreme Court has many branches spread across the country. It is the highest court in Iran and can hear appeals on decisions made by lower courts.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a message offered his condolences for the “martyrdom” of both judges.
In January 1999, attackers on motorcycles hurled an explosive at Razini’s vehicle, wounding him as he left work as the head of the judiciary in Tehran.
Mogheiseh had been under sanctions from the US Treasury since 2019. At the time, the Treasury described him as having “overseen countless unfair trials, during which charges went unsubstantiated and evidence was disregarded”.
“He is notorious for sentencing scores of journalists and internet users to lengthy prison terms,” the Treasury said. Mogheiseh had pressed charges against members of Iran’s Baha’i minority “after they reportedly held prayer and worship ceremonies with other members,” the Treasury said.
Both men had been named by activists and exiles as taking part in the 1988 executions, which came at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq. After Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a UN-brokered ceasefire, members of the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack.
Loading
Iran ultimately blunted their assault, but the attack set the stage for the sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as “death commissions”.
International rights groups estimate that as many as 5000 people were executed, while the MEK puts the number at 30,000. Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out on Khomeini’s orders, though some argue that other top officials were effectively in charge in the months before his 1989 death.
The MEK declined to comment.
While Mogheiseh never addressed the accusation he took part in the 1988 “death commissions”, Razini gave a 2017 interview published by Iran’s Shargh newspaper in which he defended the panels as “fair and completely in accordance with the law”.
“Our friends and I who are among the 20 judges in the country, we did our best to ensure the security of that time and the years after and from then, we guaranteed that the hypocrites (the MEK) could never become powerful in this country,” he reportedly said.
AP
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
