Casualties of the Iranian Revolution

Part of a series on the
History of the Iranian Revolution
Topics Timeline Background Consolidation Casualties Ideology Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists
Revolutionary leaders Mohammad Javad Bahonar Abulhassan Banisadr Mehdi Bazargan Mohammad Beheshti Mostafa Chamran Sadegh Ghotbzadeh Hassan Habibi Hashemi Rafsanjani Ali Khamenei Ahmad Khomeini Ruhollah Khomeini Mahdavi Kani Hussein-Ali Montazeri Morteza Motahhari Mousavi Ardabili Mohammad Ali Rajai Ezzatollah Sahabi Yadollah Sahabi Ali Shariati Mahmoud Taleghani Ebrahim Yazdi
Parties and organizations CCA Guerrilla groups Freedom Movement Fedai Islamic Republic Party MIRO Student Followers of the Imam's Line OIPFG MKO Tudeh
Official institutions The Interim Government Islamic republic Sepah Basij Assembly of Experts for Constitution
Events Movement of 15 Khordad Black Friday Ruhollah Khomeini's return to Iran Hostage crisis Cultural Revolution
See also Human rights in Iran

Observers differ on how many people died during the Iranian Revolution. The number of casualties suffered by protesters and revolutionaries at the hands of the Shah's monarchy during the revolution is either close to 60,000, or around 2,000, depending on whether the estimates used are those of Islamic government or from historians in Western countries. The number of protesters and political prisoners killed by the new theocratic republic after the fall of the Shah is estimated by human rights groups to be several thousand.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Casualties of the monarchy

Street clashes between protesters and Shah's regime in Iranian Revolution

Killed protesters by Shah's regime in street clashes

Street clashes between protesters and Shah's regime in Iranian Revolution

Iranian protesters on 5 June 1963

Killed protesters in Black Friday

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, stated that "60,000 men, women and children were martyred by the Shah's regime,"^[7] and this number appears in the constitution of the Islamic Republic.^[8]

More recently, tabulation by Emadeddin Baghi, a researcher at the Martyrs Foundation (Bonyad Shahid) found a far lower number of casualties. Baghi found that between 1963 and 1979, there were 3164 dead among the anti-Shah movement.^[7][9] In Iran, the Martyrs Foundation, established after the revolution to compensate the survivors of fallen revolutionaries, could identify only 744 dead in Tehran, where the majority of the casualties were supposed to have occurred. The coroner's office and Tehran's main cemetery, Behesht-e Zahra, counted 895 and 768 dead, respectively.^[10]

Casualties of the revolutionaries

Amir-Abbas Hoveyda

Following the overthrow of the Shah's government on 11 February 1979 (22 Bahman 1357), members of the old regime, including senior generals, were executed by revolutionary leadership. For this aim, the Islamic regime formed komitehs (committees) in all provinces.^[18] Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani was the chief of the Central Provisional Komiteh for the Islamic Revolution.^[18] The komitehs were lack of necessary mechanism and legal procedure, leading to restructuring on 8 March 1979.^[18]

In the first couple of months, over 200 of the Shah's senior civilian officials were killed as punishment and to eliminate the danger of coup d'état.^[19] The first death sentences were approved by the Tehran court on four of the shah's generals on February 1979.^[20] They were Mehdi Rahimi, the military commander of Tehran, Reza Naji, the military governor of Isfahan, Nematollah Nassiri, the head of SAVAK, and Manuchehr Khosrodad, an air force general. All four generals were executed by firing squad on the roof of the then Ayatollah Khomeini's headquarters on 15 February.^[20]

On 7 April 1979, Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, former prime minister of Iran, was executed.^[20] Two days later on 9 April ten senior officials of the Shah, including two generals and a cabinet member, were executed in Tehran.^[21] Those killed included commander-in-chief of the air force, Amir Hossein Rabi'i.^[21] On 11 April, former foreign minister, Abbas Ali Khalatbari, and 10 more officials were executed in Tehran.^[22] On 8 May, a total of 21 former Iranian officials, including three former high-level politicians, were executed. They were Javad Saeed, former Majlis speaker, Gholam Reza Kianpor, former information minister, and Mohammad Reza Ameli Tehrani, former education minister.^[23] On 9 May, eight men, including the prominent Jewish executive Habib Elghanian, and former information minister, Abdul Hassan Saadatmand, were executed, raising the number of the executed people 119 since February 1979.^[24]

According to an IRI study, the high number of executions in the early phase of the revolution was partly a result of infiltration of the courts by members of Mujahedin-e Khalq of Iran who were driven by their deep grudges against the former regime. Ehsan Naraghi, an Iranian sociologist is quoted saying that if it was not for MKO infiltrators the number of executions would've not been so high. Due to an official order by Ayatollah Khomeini in mid March 1979 which urged temporarily suspension of the revolutionary courts, restriction of revolutionary courts' powers and the restructuring of the judiciary, a purge of MEK infiltrators followed.^[25] Subsequently, another order by Ayatollah Khomeini in May 1979 led to a reduction of death senescence. The order stressed that unless a defendant was proven to have committed murder, or ordered genocide, or involved in a fatal torture, no court had the right to rule executions. Violation of the criterion would be an offense punishable by death penalty. Also in a speech to a group of judges he said that courts must not follow the pattern of the Pahlavi regime, lest an innocent be condemned or a guilty overcharged. He also stressed that unless a former government official was proven to have had its wealth acquired illegally, his or her properties must not be confiscated.^[26]

On 23 July 1979, five more men were executed in the Khuzestan province.^[27] The death toll became 363 with these executions since February 1979.^[27] In August 1979, the courts began to try the members of the ethnic minorities in the country who participated in anti-government demonstrations, and the trials resulted in massive death sentences.^[20] By November 1979, the death toll was 550^[20] and by January 1980, the number had reached at least 582.^[28]

Critics complained that the brief trials lacked defense attorneys, juries, transparency or opportunity for the accused to defend themselves,^[29] were held by revolutionary judges such as Sadegh Khalkhali, the Sharia judge. Those who escaped Iran were not immune. A decade later, another former Prime Minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, was assassinated in Paris, one of at least 63 Iranians abroad killed or wounded since the Shah was overthrown,^[30] although these attacks are thought to have stopped after the early 1990s.^[31]

The pace of executions then accelerated, leading to at least 906 executions between January 1980 and June 1981.^[32] After president Abulhassan Banisadr was impeached on 20 June 1981 (30 Khordad 1360), a concerted effort was made to find and prosecute the erstwhile supporters turned opposition, primarily leftists. Bloodletting became much worse. According to Shaul Bakhash,

The number who lost their lives will probably never be known with certainty. Amnesty International documented 2,946 executions in the 12 months following Bani-Sadr's impeachment. A list compiled the following year by the Mojahedin-e Khalq cited 7,746 persons who had lost their lives through executions, in street battles, or under torture in the short period from June 1981 to September 1983.^[33]

According to historian Ervand Abrahamian, revolutionary courts executed more than 8000 opponents between June 1981 and June 1985. These were mainly members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, but also included

Fedayins and Kurds as well as Tudeh, National Front, and Shariatmadari supporters. ... Thus the toll taken among those who had participated in the revolution was far greater than that of royalists. This revolution — like others — had devoured its own children.^[34]

See also

• Human rights in Islamic Republic of Iran

References