Iran regime's attempt to destroy evidence of its crimes shows it fears judgment day is nigh – Struan Stevenson
The demolition of an infamous prison is the latest sign that Iran’s dictatorship is afraid it will be held to account for mass murder, rape and its many other crimes against humanity
When 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 tearing down 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 site was being prepared for development.
But Gohardasht is far more than redundant real estate. It is a crime scene, a killing ground. 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 the country.
The opposition People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) estimates that around 30,000 political prisoners were murdered nationwide, the great majority of whom were supporters of the PMOI and National Council of Resistance of Iran. Amnesty International regards the executions and continuing enforced disappearances as crimes against humanity.
A sign Tehran fears justice
Now the bulldozers have moved in. This follows a sinister pattern stretching back decades. Amnesty 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, 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, but it cannot pour concrete over history. Gohardasht has already provided a glimpse of the justice Tehran fears.
Taking hostages to free the guilty
Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian prison official, travelled to Sweden in 2019. He was arrested and tried under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Survivors told a European courtroom about the horrors they had witnessed inside Gohardasht. For once, the executioners were unable to silence their victims.
In 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. But then came an appalling sequel.
In 2024, Sweden released Nouri after Tehran freed Swedish citizens Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi. Amnesty described Nouri’s release as a staggering blow to justice and said the circumstances confirmed that Tehran had used the Swedish nationals as hostages to secure his freedom.
The mullahs celebrated Nouri’s return. They may have done so 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.
‘Woman Life Freedom’ protests
Now the walls are closing in. Amnesty recently 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 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, 27 police commanders and 25 Interior Ministry officials. Names have been named, faces shown, chains of command mapped.
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.
Throwing open the palace gates
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. But 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.
Regime cannot erase names of its victims
Amnesty 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 terrorised while its officials assumed nobody would ever hold them personally accountable. That assumption is beginning to crumble. Perhaps that is why they want Gohardasht to 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, a former MEP and chair of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup, is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East
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