Mehdi Hashemi

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Not to be confused with Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani or Mehdi Hashemi (actor).
Mehdi Hashemi

Hojjat al-Islam Sayyed Mehdi Hashemi (d. 28 September 1987) was an Iranian cleric and senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards executed in the first decade of the Islamic Republic. Officially he was guilty of sedition, murder, and related charges, but others suspect his true crime was opposition to the regime's secret dealings with the United States (see Iran-Contra affair). He is not related to Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the wealthy and powerful Iranian official Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

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[edit] Background

Hashemi first became known to the Iranian public in 1977 when SAVAK arrested him for the vigilante murder of "prostitutes, homosexuals, and drug traffickers". He was also accused of murdering a conservative cleric who had publicly insulted Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri - Mehdi Hashemi being the brother of Hadi Hashemi, the Ayatollah Montazeri's son-in-law. During this time he was defended by opponents of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as an innocent victim framed by SAVAK in an attempt "to tarnish the reputation of the clerical establishment." [1]

Upon his release from a SAVAK prison after the 1979 revolution he was celebrated[2] as a "religious hero."[3]

He became an official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards[4] and was in charge of the Bureau of Assistance to the Islamic Movements in the World. The bureau was tasked with spreading the Islamic Revolution throughout the Middle East.

[edit] Opposition to arms dealing with the US

Mehdi Hashemi opposed his government's efforts to obtain scarce weapons and spares for the Iran-Iraq War from the United States and Israel. He organized a street demonstration in downtown Tehran to protest the arrival of secret American envoy Robert McFarlane and leaked[5] news of the dealings to a Lebanese newspaper Ash-Shiraa. The appearance of the story in the newspaper's November 3, 1986 issue, triggered a scandal[6] in both Iran and the United States, as American government policy forbade selling weapons to Iran, and in Iran, America was condemned as "the Great Satan" and Israel as the "Little Satan". The dealings were known in the Western world as the Iran-Contra Affair or Irangate scandal.

[edit] Arrest

Shortly before the exposing of the Iran-Contra scandal, in October 1986, the Iranian government announced Hashemi had been arrested for treason[7] along with 40 associates including his brother Hadi Hashemi. His prosecution was handled by the Mohammad Reyshahri, the former judge of the military tribunals who had recently been appointed minister of intelligence. According to Reysharhri's Political Memoirs, Hashemi had powerful patrons, and after a month-long investigation all the interrogators "had obtained was a taped interview in which the wise guy [i.e. Mehdi Hashemi] had cleverly planted deviant ideas."[8]

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."[9] 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 ..." [10]

In August 1987, after the confession was made public, Hashemi was tried by a Special Clerical Court on charges of "sowing corruption on earth, inciting Fitna, succumbing to Satan, and desecrating the martyrs of the Islamic Revolution."[11] Specifically according to Reyshahri this meant raiding and abetting he Mojahedin having an ongoing relationship with SAVAK, smuggling opium from Afghanistan, and eliminating one of Montazeri's rivals by `inducing the spread of cancer through his body.` At the same time Reyshahri took the opportunity to deny the `insidious notion` that Hashemi was being punished because of his opposition to the McFarlane visit, saying `Those spreading this false rumor are helping the Black House [i.e. the White House].`[12]

Evidence that Hashemi was tortured to confess comes from an unsypathetic source. An anonymous Iranian author of a prison memoir has 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 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 Mehdi Hashemi - when the author and her fellow leftists saw Hashemi on video, they "spontaneously said to themselves, `He must have suffered unbearable tortures.`" [13]

[edit] Execution

He was executed in 1987 before his guilty verdict was announced. This was reportly done to preclude intervention on Hashemi's behalf by Montazeri, according prosecutor Reyshahri.[14] The execution was a blow to Ayatollah Montazeri, who had pleaded with Ayatollah Khomeini on Hashemi's behalf saying he had "known him inside out since our childhood. He is a devout Muslim, a militant revolutionary, and a great admirer of the Imam." Yet another suspicious note was that despite the extremely serious nature of the charges, only one of Hashemi's few dozen co-defendants was executed - the others were all pardoned or given light sentences. [15]

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

Abrahamian, Ervand, Tortured Confessions, (University of California Press, 1999)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Abrahamian, Ervand, Tortured Confessions, (University of California Press, 1999), p.162
  2. ^ Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) (October 10, 1999).
  3. ^ Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), p.162
  4. ^ "WHO IS TO BLAME FOR IRAN'S RECENT PROBLEMS?", GlobalSecurity.org, 18 January 1999.  "...Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) official Mehdi Hashemi was convicted of murder and plotting against the government and was executed in 1987..."
  5. ^ Was There a Second Irangate? - OhmyNews International
  6. ^ Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), p.162
  7. ^ New York Times, November 4, 1986, "Hostage's released linked to shift in Iranian Foreign Policy" p.A1
  8. ^ Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), p. 163
  9. ^ Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), pp 162-166
  10. ^ Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), pp 165
  11. ^ "The Text of the Chief Prosecutor's Indictment against Mehdi Hashemi", Kayhan-e Hava'i 27 August 1987
  12. ^ `Interview with the Minister of Intelligence,` Kayhan-e Hava'i, 24 December 1986
  13. ^ Raha, M. 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, 1992-94), 1:141-43] (quoted in Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), p.225
  14. ^ Reyshahri, M., Khaterat-e Siyasi (Political Memoirs), (Tehran, 1990) p.136
  15. ^ Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, (1999), p.166