Relatives Of Massacred Iranian Prisoners Push To Oust Professor From Ohio College

Families of political prisoners executed in Iran’s in 1988 are meeting Ohio state legislators to push for the sacking of a college professor accused of being involved in the killings.

According to a statement released by relatives of the victims, they will meet with 10 state legislators to ask them to withhold state and federal funding to Oberlin College until Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a former Iranian UN envoy who covered up the mass killings, is fired.

"On April 28 we will hold a protest at Oberlin College, and then we will participate in the Oberlin city rally to hail the courage of the Iranian people in standing up against the clerical regime," read the statement.

Mahallati, currently a professor of religion at Oberlin College, is accused of playing a role as an accomplice in the 1988 prison massacre.

The executions were carried out based on a fatwa by Iran's then-supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, against the MEK which carried out a wave of bombings in Iran and struck an alliance with Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war.

The exact number of prisoners executed during the purge of prisoners is not known but according to Amnesty International, the Iranian authorities "forcibly disappeared" and "extrajudicially executed" around 5,000 between July and September 1988.

Mahallati maintains that he was unaware of the executions despite Amnesty International’s numerous urgent notices to Iran calling for an end to the killings which were widely reported by the media.