REPORT: Iranian Ayatollah Faces Execution

Ayatollah Kazemeyni-Boroujerdi could face execution soon for his beliefs. He is an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime and supports a separation of mosque and state in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Oct 05, 2014, 07:12PM | Rachel Avraham

Ayatollah Kazemeyni-Boroujerdi, an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime and a proponent of separation between mosque and state, is known to stand behind his convictions even under torture and threats of death.   In 2006, he told his supporters right before he was arrested, “Neighbors, know that Boroujerdi’s crime was that he doesn’t put up with the government.”  He asked the Iranian government, “Are you ready to serve the people or to kill them?  Your duty is the eradication of poverty in this society or annihilating the descendants of the Prophet Muhammed?”

“Neighbors know that I am ready to die,” he declared then. “I have come to die like my ancestor Imam Hussein. I have come to teach all of you about sacrifice and resistance. I have come to inform you that Islam doesn’t oppress, the prophet isn’t ruthless, Allah doesn’t oppress the people, etc. Neighbors be a witness, if we get killed, tell the world that on some day in the Ramadan month that those who profess Islam kidnap Muslims from this street and take them to prison to torture them.” Right now, this same Ayatollah could be executed at any moment in the Islamic Republic of Iran due to his convictions that sought for Iran to be a better society.
The Iran Human Rights Center reported that they heard from their sources that Ayatollah Kazemeyni-Boroujerdi was transferred from his ward in Evin Prison to the location where dissidents await their death sentences, where he is presently in solitary confinement. Recently, the Iranian authorities stated that they will execute him soon. The Iran Human Rights center called upon the international community to act to save him. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesperson of the Iran Human Rights center, stated, “We take these reports seriously and ask the international community to react before it is too late.”
According to Amnesty International, he has 30 charges against him, among them waging war against God, which carries the death penalty in Iran; acting against national security, publicly calling the Velayet-e-Faqih (the rulership by Islamic jurisprudence that guides the Islamic Republic of Iran) unlawful; having links with revolutionaries and spies; and referring to the Islamic Republic of Iran as a religious dictatorship in his speeches and interviews. He has also been accused of apostasy and heresy.
For these charges, he was originally given the death penalty in 2007, but it was commuted to eleven years in prison until recently. He was also banned from wearing his clerical robes, had his house and all of his belongings confiscated, and was denied critical medical treatment since his arrest. He suffers from diabetes, asthma, Parkinson’s disease, kidney and heart problems, severe pain in his legs and waist, and is also blind in one eye. Aside from that, he has been beaten, thrown up against a wall, and had cold water thrown on him while sleeping. His family members have also been harassed by the authorities. Amnesty International has called for his release.