Who were the Supreme Court judges assassinated in Iran?

Judges Mohammad Moghiseh and Ali Razini, assassinated in Tehran on January 18, had decades-long histories of handing down death sentences and lengthy prison terms to dissidents in numerous cases.

The cases handled by the two judges, both of the clerical rank of hojjat ol-eslam, involved political dissidents, activists, followers of the Baha’i faith, dissident clerics, and those accused of security-related "crimes."

Moghiseh and Razini were targeted at the Supreme Court’s headquarters in central Tehran.

Both Razini and Moghiseh were frequently referred to as "hanging judges" by critics and are primarily remembered for their roles in the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners.

Judge Ali Razini

Born in the western Hamedan Province in 1953, Razini held a variety of high-ranking judicial positions over his career. He began serving as a magistrate in the Revolutionary Court of Tehran as early as 1980, just a year after the Islamic Revolution, when he was only 23.

Razini went on to hold numerous senior roles, including:

• • Chief judge of the Special Clerical Court
• • Chief of the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces
• • Head of Tehran’s Department of Justice
• • Chief of the Administrative Justice Court
• • Legal deputy of the Judiciary chief under Sadegh Amoli-Larijani

At the time of his assassination, Razini served as the chief of Branch 41 of the Supreme Court. However, specific details about his appointment to this position remain unclear.

Razini had survived another assassination attempt by a member of Mahdaviyat, a dissident radical Shia group devoted to the Cult of the 12th Imam, Mahdi, in January 1998 when he was the head of the Tehran Department of Justice.

Judge Mohammad Moghishe

Judge Mohammad Moghiseh, born in Sabzevar in 1956, was appointed to the Supreme Court in November 2020 and headed its Branch 53 at the time of his assassination. Prior to this, he served as the chief judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran where he had a record of over thirty years as a judge. Moghiseh was known to use aliases, including "Naserian."

In December 2019, the US Treasury sanctioned Moghiseh and Judge Abolghasem Salavati, the head of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, for human rights violations.

Moghiseh was among the security and judicial officials involved in pursuing the execution of prisoners during the 1980s, particularly in the summer of 1988.

Survivors of those executions have described him as one of the harshest judicial figures in the prisons of the 1980s.

Role in prison purges of the 1988

The mass executions in 1988 targeted members of the MEK (Mojahedin-e Khalq) and, to a lesser extent, leftist prisoners. These executions, which began in July, were carried out based on two orders issued by Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini. Many of the victims were teenagers or people in their 20s, serving prison sentences as political activists, with no history of armed actions against the government.

The condemned were subjected to brief interrogations by "death committees," which included future President Ebrahim Raisi. These sessions, often lasting only a few minutes, determined the prisoners' fates based on their willingness to denounce their political views and affiliations.

Estimates of the number of victims vary widely. Historian Ervand Abrahamian places the figure between 2,500 and 6,000, while the MEK claims the toll is as high as 30,000.

Many victims were buried in unmarked mass graves, such as the Khavaran cemetery near Tehran. Their families were often denied accurate death certificates and were barred from visiting the graves to mourn their loved ones.