By Ken Blackwell
| July 29, 2021 | 3:50pm EDT
Iranian President-Elect Ebrahim Raisi holds a press conference at Shahid Beheshti conference hall on June 21, 2021 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo credit: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
On Aug. 5, the new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, will be inaugurated. Raisi was a member of the infamous Death Commission in Tehran in 1988.
Along with Hossein Ali Nayyeri, the Sharia judge; Morteza Eshraqi, Tehran prosecutor; and Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, deputy minister of Intelligence, Raisi was a key decision maker in the summary executions of thousands of members and supporters of the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), in Evin and Gohardasht prisons. According to those who survived the massacre, Raisi played a dual role of prosecutor and a member of the death committee to determine the fate of prisoners.