Struan StevensonWhen a dictatorship starts demolishing its prisons and bulldozing its mass graves, the world should ask a simple question. What is it frightened of? The Iranian regime has begun demolishing Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, one of the most infamous sites of political repression in the Islamic Republic.
Iranian state media reported this month that the prison walls would be demolished, and the site prepared for development. But Gohardasht is far more than redundant real estate. It is a crime scene.
During the summer of 1988, political prisoners were hauled before so-called Death Commissions. Hearings often lasted only minutes. Thousands were subsequently executed in prisons across Iran. The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) estimate that around 30,000 political prisoners were murdered nationwide, the great majority members or supporters of the PMOI and National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
Amnesty International has documented the killing of several thousand prisoners and regards the executions and continuing enforced disappearances as crimes against humanity.
Gohardasht was one of the principal killing grounds. Now the bulldozers have moved in. This follows a sinister pattern stretching back decades. Amnesty International has documented repeated attempts by the authorities to destroy or damage suspected mass graves connected with the 1988 massacre. Bulldozers, roads, buildings, rubbish dumps and new burial plots have all been used.
At Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery the authorities destroyed Plot 41, containing graves of political prisoners executed during the 1980s, to construct a car park. At Khavaran, where victims of the 1988 massacre are believed to lie in mass graves, grieving relatives have endured intimidation and repeated interference with the site.
These are scarcely the actions of a regime comfortable with its past. A dictatorship may pour concrete over a grave. It cannot pour concrete over history. Gohardasht itself has already provided a terrifying glimpse of the justice that Tehran fears.
Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian prison official, travelled to Sweden in 2019. He was arrested and tried under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Survivors entered a European courtroom and described the horrors they had witnessed inside Gohardasht.
For once, the executioners were unable to silence their victims. In July 2022 a Swedish court sentenced Nouri to life imprisonment for murder and serious violations of international law arising from his participation in the 1988 executions. An appeals court upheld his sentence.
Then came an appalling sequel. In June 2024 Sweden released Nouri in a prisoner exchange after Tehran freed Swedish citizens Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi. Amnesty International described Nouri’s release as a staggering blow to justice and said the circumstances confirmed that Tehran had held Swedish nationals as hostages to secure his freedom. The mullahs celebrated Nouri’s return.
They may have celebrated too soon. The significance of his prosecution reaches far beyond one prison official. His trial demonstrated that time, borders and former positions of power provide no guaranteed sanctuary. Survivors remember. Witnesses testify. Evidence survives. Universal jurisdiction can transform yesterday’s executioner into tomorrow’s defendant.
Now the walls are closing in further. This week Amnesty International published a monumental investigation running to more than 1,000 pages into the savage repression of the 2022 ‘Woman Life Freedom’ uprising.
Its findings are devastating. Amnesty says the Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity including murder, torture, enforced disappearance, imprisonment, rape and persecution. Its investigators mapped chains of command and identified 87 officials who, Amnesty says, should face criminal investigation. They include 33 IRGC commanders, 27 police commanders and 25 Interior Ministry officials. Names have been named. Faces have been shown. Chains of command have been mapped.
Alongside this enormous investigation Amnesty has published details of 377 protesters and bystanders killed during the uprising, recording names, locations and dates of death, together with photographs where available. Every page delivers the same message to Iran’s rulers.
The evidence is accumulating. That is why the demolition of Gohardasht matters. The regime understands that prisons can become crime scenes. Mass graves can yield forensic evidence. Government documents can expose chains of command. Survivors can become witnesses. Officials who once signed death warrants can eventually find themselves facing judges.
The precedent of Hamid Nouri must haunt them. The commanders of the IRGC, intelligence services, judiciary and security forces may feel protected while the Islamic Republic survives. They should remember how quickly such protection can disappear.
History is littered with dictators and torturers who believed their power would last forever. Then one morning the palace gates opened, the archives were seized, and the victims began to speak. This explains the urgency behind the bulldozers.
The destruction of Gohardasht is therefore more than vandalism. It is an attempt to erase evidence before evidence becomes testimony, testimony becomes prosecution and prosecution becomes justice.
The international community must act. Archives and official records should be secured. Survivors and relatives must be allowed to testify. Governments should support mechanisms capable of collecting evidence for future prosecutions.
Amnesty International has called for the UN General Assembly to establish an international criminal justice mechanism for Iran. That demand deserves urgent attention.
For decades the clerical dictatorship has survived behind a wall of impunity. It has tortured, executed and terrorized while its officials assumed that nobody would ever hold them personally accountable.That assumption is beginning to crumble.
Perhaps that is why Gohardasht must disappear. The regime can demolish the cells. It can bulldoze the execution chambers. It can build roads across mass graves and car parks over the dead.
But it cannot demolish the testimony of survivors. It cannot bulldoze the evidence already gathered. It cannot erase the names and faces of the victims. And it cannot escape a simple truth that must increasingly trouble those responsible for Iran’s decades of bloodshed. Governments fall. Archives survive. Witnesses remember.And one day the executioners may face their judges.
Struan Stevenson was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999–2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009–14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004–14).
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