Five of the most pivotal men in Iranian political history share a prayer in Tabriz, Iran in 1987. First row, left to right: Ahmad Azari Qomi, Ali Meshkini, Hossein-Ali Montazeri. Second row, left to right: Sadegh Khalkhali, Yousef Sanei
NOTE: As I mentioned in my previous column, I am strongly against the way the Iranian government treats women but if we just ignore Iran for imposing the death sentence for homosexuality and many others, and just focus on the way they execute people for the crimes of terrorism, drug trafficking and murder, they are doing an excellent job of fighting crime. This Iranian judge maybe a tyrant and a very strict jurist and I oppose most of his actions, but if you have judges like him, scumbags in your country will be afraid and crime will fall. Judges like him can protect the innocent people in the country and punish the guilty.
In regards to his quote: "If my victims were to come back on earth, I would execute them again, without exceptions."……it shows that he is harsh on crime and he is determined that those who do evil, will never do it again!
Hujjat al-Islam Sadeq Givi aka Sadegh Khalkhali (Persian: قداص یلاخلخ )(July 27, 1926 – November 26, 2003) was a hardline Twelver Shi'a cleric of the Islamic Republic of Iran who is said to have "brought to his job as Chief Justice of the revolutionary courts a relish for summary execution" that earned him a reputation as Iran's "hanging judge". A farmer's son born in Givi (Ardabil Province, Iran) [2] in appearance Khalkhali was "a small, rotund man with a pointed beard, kindly smile, and a high-pitched giggle." He was married with a son.
Khalkhali is known to have been one of Khomeini's circle of disciples as far back as 1955 and is reported to have reconstructed the former secret society of Islamic assassins known as the Fadayan-e Islam after its suppression, but was not a well-known figure to the public prior to the Islamic Revolution.
On February 24, 1979, however, Khalkhali was chosen by Ayatollah Khomeini to be the Sharia ruler ( عرش مکاح in Persian) or head the newly established Revolutionary Courts, and to make Islamic rulings. In the early days of the revolution he sentenced to death "hundreds of former government officials" on charges such as "spreading corruption on earth" and "warring against God." Most of the condemned did not have access to a lawyer or a jury.
Executions of Amir Abbas Hoveida and Nematollah Nassiri:
Khalkhali is famous for ordering the executions of Amir Abbas Hoveida, the Shah's long time prime minister, and Nematollah Nassiri, a former head of SAVAK.
According to one report, after sentencing Hoveida to death pleas for clemency poured in from all over the world and it was said that Khalkhali was told by telephone to stay the execution. Khalkhali replied that he would go and see what was happening. He then went to Hoveida and either shot him himself or instructed a minion to do the deed. "I'm sorry," he told the person at the other end of the telephone, "the sentence has already been carried out."
Another version of the story has Khalkhali saying that while presiding over Hoveida's execution he made sure communication links between Qasr Prison and the outside world were severed, "to prevent any last-minute intercession on his behalf by Mehdi Bazargan, the provisional prime minister."
By trying Hoveida, Khalkhali effectively undermined the position of the provisional prime minister of the Islamic Revolution, the moderate Mehdi Bazargan, who disapproved of the Islamic Revolutionary Court and sought to establish the Revolution's reputation for justice and moderation.
Foreign relations:
Khalkhali was known for his antipathy towards pre-Islamic Iran. In 1979 he wrote a book "branding King Cyrus the Great a tyrant, a liar, and a homosexual" and "called for the destruction of the Cyrus tomb and remains of the two-thousand-year-old Persian palace in Shiraz, Fars Province, the Persepolis." According an interview by Elaine Sciolino of Shiraz-based Ayatollah Majdeddin Mahallati, Khalkhali came to Persepolis with "a band of thugs" and gave an angry speech demanding that "the faithful torch the silk-lined tent city and the grandstand that the Shah had built," but was driven off by stone-throwing local residents.
Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Reza Shah's mausoleum was destroyed under the direction of Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, which was sanctioned by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
At the height of the Iran hostage crisis in 1980 following the failure of the American rescue mission Operation Eagle Claw and crash of U.S. helicopters killing their crews, Khalkhali appeared on television "ordering the bags containing the dismembered limbs of the dead servicemen to be split open so that the blackened remains could be picked over and photographed," to the anger of American viewers.
Drug traffickers:
Khalkhali later investigated and ordered the execution of many activists for federalism in Kurdistan and Turkmen Sahra, At the height of its activity Khalkhali's revolutionary court sentenced to death "up to 60 Kurds a day."
Following that, in August 1980 he was asked by President Banisadr to take charge of trying and sentencing drug dealers, and sentenced hundreds to death. Ironically, one of the complaints of the revolution's leader and Khalkhali's superior, the Ayatollah Khomeini against the regime they had overthrown was that the Shah's far more limited number of executions of drug traffickers had been `inhuman.`
In December 1980 his influence waned when he was forced to resign from the revolutionary courts because of his failure to account for $14 million seized through drug raids, confiscations, and fines," although some believe this as much the doing of President Bani-Sadr and the powerful head of the Islamic Republic Party Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti "working behind the scenes" to remove a source of bad publicity for the revolution, as a matter of outright corruption.
The interview
In an interview, Khalkhali personally confirmed ordering more than 100 executions, although many sources believe that by the time of his death he had sent 8,000 men and women to their deaths. In some cases he was the executioner, where he executed his victims using machine guns. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro he is quoted as saying, "If my victims were to come back on earth, I would execute them again, without exceptions."
Qom seminary:
Khalkhali was elected as representative for Qom in Islamic Consultative Assembly (Iranian parliament) for two terms, serving for "more than a decade." In 1992, however, he was one of 39 incumbents from the Third Majles and 1000 or so candidates rejected that winter and spring by the Council of Guardians, which vets candidates. The reason given was a failure to show a `practical commitment to Islam and to the Islamic government,` but it was thought by some to be a purge of radical critics of the conservatives in power. Controversially, he was one of the reformists and supporters of president Khatami's movement.
Khalkhali retired to Qom, where he taught Islamic seminarians. He died in 2003, at the age of 77, of cancer and heart disease.
Street tribunals of Khomeyni executioner Sadegh Khalkhali - The cleric Sadegh Khalkhali appointed by Khomeyni as the Islamic judge in 1979 . He executed thousands of politicians including PM Hoveyda ,army officers , pilots , women and member of political parties all over Iran . This scenes of his tribunal streets claimed to be against narcotraficer was filmed by a freelance cameraman in the beginning of revolution . The quality is old and was kept in a non convenient environment , therefore it have low quality .
Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali
Hanging judge at the forefront of Iran's reign of terror after the revolution of 1979
- Haleh Afshar
- The Guardian,
The death of Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali aged 77 marks another step on the road towards reforms and the recognition of human rights in Iran. Khalkhali, known as the hanging judge, was at the forefront of the reign of terror that followed the Iranian revolution in 1979 and was a founder member of the Militant Clergy of Tehran who were committed to Islamification at all costs.
As the president of the Revolutionary Courts, his trials of many of the Shah's leading lieutenants were initially heard in classrooms. They sometimes lasted as little as one minute; executions on the school rooftops usually followed immediately.
He was a farmer's son, born near Khalkhal (hence his name), and was part of that group of bright young men who attended religious schools, which have always provided an alternative route to education. He was active as an Islamist resistance fighter from the 1950s until the ousting of the Shah.
The killings began five days after Ayatollah Khomeini's return in February 1979 from Paris. By November, 550 people had been executed.
In May 1980 Khalkhali was moved sideways and appointed to head an anti-narcotic campaign. The move did not diminish his power to kill at will. Within weeks there were 127 executions; by the end of August there were 200, including members of Marxist organisations and prisoners on hunger strike.
In December, President Bani-Sadr forced the "bloody judge" to resign for failure to account for over $14m seized by the agency through drug raids confiscation and fines. By sacking him, Bani-Sadr incurred Khalkhali's wrath, which, in June 1981, led to a successful move to impeach the president. A beaming Khalkhali announced the decision to a cheering crowd and symbolically grasped his own throat as the sign for the hangman. In the event Bani-Sadr managed to leave the country dressed as a woman.
The departure of Bani-Sadr marked the beginning of the bloodiest phase of the post-revolutionary struggle for power. There was a massive purge of the administration and the media. The resistance movements staged counterattacks and bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party. The regime retaliated by open attacks and mass executions.
Ayatollah Khalkhali announced that every citizen had the right to be an executioner and told the faithful to "dispense with troublesome formalities". Gallows were hitched up in main Tehran streets and sometimes as many as eight people were hanged at the same time. In the mayhem that ensued, the age of treason was lowered and children as young as nine were "executed". Within a couple of months over 8000 people had been killed.
Eventually the thirst for blood was satiated. In December 1982 Ayatollah Khomeini, as spiritual leader, issued an eight-point decree announcing that the state had a duty of care to its citizen and demanding that the indiscriminate killing be curbed. Gradually the killings abated, but the legacy that Khalkhali left was the conviction that it was possible, and indeed laudable, for "Islamic courts" to execute individuals at will.
In 1984, Khalkhali returned to the parliament as the representative for Qom. But it was in 1989 that he helped to make yet another indelible mark on the destiny of the Islamic Republic - as a kingmaker.
Immediately after Khomeini's death in 1989, Khalkhali was the first person to propose Hojatoleslam Ali Khamenei as the spiritual leader of the nation. This was an extraordinary suggestion since the spiritual leader was required to be one of the best Islamic scholars in the land and a leading ayatollah. Khamenei lacked all those necessary qualifications.
But Khalkhali's proposal was supported by the speaker of the House, Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Rafsanjani. Both were determined to secure the legacy of Khomeini and argued that what the spiritual leader required most of all was political nous and the ability to direct the nation along the lines drawn by Khomeini.
With all anti-Khomeini elements purged, the assembly voted Khamenei as spiritual leader and elevated him to ayatollah. The long Shia tradition of contestation and scholarship was buried under the weight of Khomeini and his disciples' interpretations of the faith. Thus Khalkhali effectively secured Khomeini's legacy and his own influence as a power behind the throne.
However, President Khatami's 1997 landslide election was a firm rejection of everything that Khalkhali had stood for. Khalkhali made a symbolic nod towards reformism. But his influence continues through the theocrat Khamenei, who remains true to the ideals of Khomeini.
Ayatollah Khalkhali leaves a wife and a son.
· Mohammed Sadeq Givi Khalkhali, cleric, born July 27 1926; died November 27 2003
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