Mehdi Hashemi
Mehdi Hashemi | |
---|---|
Born | 1944 Qahderijan, Iran |
Died | September 28, 1987 Tehran, Iran | (aged 42–43)
Allegiance | Iran |
Service/ | Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps |
Years of service | 1979–1987 |
Commands held | Liberation Movements Unit |
Battles/wars | 1982 Lebanon War Soviet–Afghan War |
Mehdi Hashemi (1944 – 28 September 1987) was an Iranian
Background
Hashemi was born in
Hashemi first became known to the Iranian public during the closing days of the
Upon his release from prison by the successor security agency
According to several sources, he came to head the liberation movements unit in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, dealing with other minority Shi'a communities including Lebanon's Hezbollah, then fighting the Israeli invasion, and Afghan mujahideen units,[7] then fighting the Soviet–Afghan War. Some sources say Hashemi ran an organization out of Montazeri's office which sought to export the Islamic revolution to other Shi'a areas;[9] other sources say he was in charge of the "Bureau of Assistance to the Islamic Movements in the World", which was tasked with spreading the Islamic Revolution throughout the Middle East.[citation needed]
Opposition to arms dealing with the US
Hashemi opposed the Iranian government's efforts to obtain scarce weapons and spares for the
Arrest
After Hashemi's followers kidnapped a Syrian official in Tehran in October 1986,
However many more months of "thorough" interrogation of Hashemi including the application of 75 lashes for lying, and confrontation with "damaging confessions" from his 40 accomplices including his brother, produced more. After eight months and three different taped interviews Hashemi produced a taped confession aired on national television and headlined in newspapers as "I am Manifest Proof of Deviation."[5] In it he confessed to "storing weapons, forging documents, criticizing the government, and sowing dissension among seminary students" and the revolutionary guards. Answering his own question of why he had done these things he explained that "carnal instincts" (nafsaniyat) had enticed him into "illicit relations" (ravabat) with SAVAK and Satan. In regards to his work in Montazeri's bureau of assistance to the Islamic movements, in the world he said:
I now realize that despicable sinners like myself had no business inside the heir-designate's office. I thank God that I have been removed from that office.
and pleaded with those who shared his "deviant ideas to return to the correct path..."[5]
Khomeini revived the
Evidence that Hashemi was tortured to confess comes from an unsympathetic source. An anonymous Iranian author of a prison memoir described how all political prisoners in Iran at that time were under intense pressure to denounce their former political beliefs and comrades and as a result, they often "carefully scrutinized" the numerous video confessions of other prisoners prison officials played for the prisoners "to figure out which speakers had capitulated without much resistance and which had resisted to their utmost." Though mortal ideological enemies of Hashemi, when the author and her fellow leftists saw Hashemi on video, they "spontaneously said to themselves, 'He must have suffered unbearable tortures.'"[14]
Execution
Hashemi was executed in Tehran in September 1987
References
- ^ S2CID 218602348.
- ^ "Lebanese paper on Hashemi" (PDF). Al Shira. 3 November 1986. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
- ^ Mehdi Khalaji (February 2012). "Supreme Succession. Who Will Lead Post-Khamenei Iran?" (PDF). Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Archived from the original (Policy Focus (No. 117)) on 16 April 2014.
- ^ Ali Alfoneh (Fall 2008). "The Revolutionary Guards' Role in Iranian Politics". Middle East Quarterly: 2–14.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-520-21623-5.
- ^ "Iran Report". Global Security. 10 October 1999.
- ^ a b c d Iran Report, 9 August 1999, Global Security 2 (32).
- ISBN 978-0-8133-0764-0.
- ISBN 0-300-09856-1.
- ISBN 9781107043046.
- ^ New York Times, 4 November 1986, "Hostage's released linked to shift in Iranian Foreign Policy" p. A1
- ^ The Text of the Chief Prosecutor's Indictment against Mehdi Hashemi, Kayhan-e Hava'i 27 August 1987
- ^ Interview with the Minister of Intelligence, Kayhan-e Hava'i, 24 December 1986
- ^ M. Raha. (1992-94). Haqiqat-e Sadeh: Khaterat-e as Zendan-ha-ye Zanan-e Jomhuri-ye Islami, (Plain Truths: Memoirs from Women's Prisons in the Islamic Republic), Hanover, 1:141-43] (quoted in Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), p. 225
- ISBN 0-944029-39-6. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 14 August 2013.
- ^ M. Reyshahri. (1990). Khaterat-e Siyasi (Political Memoirs), Tehran, p. 136