[15]: 218  According to Iran's then-Deputy-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Montazeri, officials had been planning the executions for years, using the MeK operation as an excuse to carry them out.

[17] They were condemned by Montazeri;[18] the United Nations Human Rights Council;[19] and several countries including Sweden,[20] Canada,[21] and Italy.

[citation needed] The Islamic modernist People's Mujahedin of Iran (MeK) had a complicated relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini's government.

[23] After the revolution, as Khomeini's government began suppressing former allies—including liberals, leftists and moderates—the MeK became the regime's most powerful enemy and its primary target.

[24]: 234, 239  Beginning in February 1980, Hezbollah supporters attacked meeting spots, bookstores, and newsstands owned by the MeK and other leftists.

[8]: 81–83 In 2016, an audio recording posted online purported to reveal a 1988 meeting between then-Deputy-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Montazeri and officials responsible for the mass executions in Tehran.

[33] In the recording, Montazeri is heard saying that the Ministry of Intelligence used the MeK's attack as a pretext to carry out the mass killings, which "had been under consideration for several years".

The order led to the creation of "special commissions" that were tasked with executing MeK members, who were labeled moharebs (those who war against Allah).

[15]: 210 In part, the letter reads:[34][35] [In the Name of God, The Compassionate, the Merciful,] As the treacherous Monafeqin [Hypocrites] do not believe in Islam and what they say is out of deception and hypocrisy, and As their leaders have confessed that they have become renegades, and As they are waging war on God, and As they are engaging in classical warfare in the western, the northern and the southern fronts, and As they are collaborating with the Baathist Party of Iraq and spying for Saddam against our Muslim nation, and As they are tied to the World Arrogance, and in light of their cowardly blows to the Islamic Republic since its inception, It is decreed that those who are in prison throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for the Monafeqin [Hypocrites] are waging war on God and are condemned to execution.

On 19 July 1988, Iranian authorities closed several major prisons, preventing all visits and phone calls and refusing to accept letters, care packages, or medicine from families.

[37] According to historian Ervand Abrahamian, in his book Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, a 16-member commission oversaw the executions in Tehran.

The commission included various authorities from key parts of the Islamic government: Khomeini, the president, the chief prosecutor, the Revolutionary Tribunals, the Justice and Intelligence ministries, and officials from Evin and Gohardasht prisons, where the executions took place.

[15]: 210 Another account of how the executions were carried out, given by Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and supported by Abrahamian in a 2017 interview, says they were administered by a "four-man commission", known as the "death committee".

[8]: 117  Due to the high number of prisoners facing execution, they were placed onto forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes every 30 minutes.

[citation needed] Female MeK members faced the same harsh treatment as their male counterparts, with most being hanged as "armed enemies of Allah".

This was because, according to the commission's interpretation of Islamic law, women were not fully responsible for their actions and "could be given discretionary punishments to mend their ways and obey male superiors".

[51]: 87–88  In 2009, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center commissioned Geoffrey Robertson QC to review evidence and witness statements that they had collected regarding the executions.

According to Amnesty International, "there has also been an ongoing campaign by the Islamic Republic to demonize victims, distort facts, and repress family survivors and human rights defenders".

[60] The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) brought attention to the executions on 30 August 2017, sharing a statement from three non-governmental organizations (NGOs) calling for truth, justice, and steps to prevent similar events.

The statement asked the UN to "launch [a] fact-finding mission to investigate Iran's 1988 massacre in order to end impunity and prevent the same fate for detained protesters today".

[63] In their report Blood-soaked secrets: Why Iran’s 1988 prison massacres are ongoing crimes against humanity, they claim that: Thousands of political dissidents were systematically subjected to enforced disappearance in Iranian detention facilities across the country and extrajudicially executed pursuant to an order issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran and implemented across prisons in the country.

In an article for Radio Free Europe, UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard is quoted as saying that this was the "first time that someone [was] charged in relation to the events that took place in 1988 in Iran".

Montazeri also wrote to Khomeini asking him to "at least order to spare women who have children" and warning that "the execution of several thousand prisoners in a few days will not reflect positively and will not be mistake-free".

[18] He criticized the Special Commission for "violating Islam by executing repenters and minor offenders who in a proper court of law would have received a mere reprimand".

The government released letters between the two leaders, but "the selection dealt only with the Hashemi affair and scrupulously avoided the mass executions—thus observing the official line that these executions never took place".[15]: 220 [when?]

The recording showed Montazeri meeting with four members of the special judicial tribunal: Eshraqi, Raisi, Pourmohammadi, and judge Hossein-Ali Nayeri.

As a result, he was charged with "spreading propaganda against the system" and "revealing plans, secrets or decisions regarding the state's domestic or foreign policies... in a manner amounting to espionage".

[8][page needed][45] Public knowledge about the executions and widespread condemnation have "compelled the Islamic Republic to engage in a damage-containment propaganda exercise".

[36][page needed][78] Abrahamian, in Tortured Confessions, criticized the executions by pointing out that most of the prisoners killed had only committed minor offenses, as those guilty of major crimes had already been put to death.

In his view, the executions acted as "a glue" to hold "together his disparate followers" and as a way to "purge" moderates like Montazeri and prevent any future "détente with the West" from destroying his legacy.