Parliament’s judiciary committee investigates deaths of Supreme Court judges
Deputy Chairman of Parliament's Judiciary Committee announced that the committee has launched an investigation into the deaths of Supreme Court judges Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh.
“This is undoubtedly a major loss for the judiciary,” Mohammad Taghi Naghdali said. “These were capable individuals who stood firm against insecurity and threats to the country’s stability, dedicating their lives to the values of Islam and the Islamic Republic.”
Members of the police stand in front of the judiciary building after the assassination of the Supreme Court Judges Mohammad Moghiseh and Ali Razini in Tehran, Iran, January 18, 2025.
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."
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.
Iranian president's social affairs assistant, Ali Rabiei, condemned the judiciary attack, calling it a 'targeted conspiracy' by Iran's enemies to undermine hope and unity among the people.
"Whenever a glimmer of hope and progress towards resolving issues appears, Iran’s enemies resort to violence, carrying out targeted and hypocritical assassinations, such as today’s bloody attack in the judiciary," former Iranian minister and long-time intelligence official Ali Rabiei wrote on X.
"The Iranian people have always expressed their hatred towards these affiliated terrorists. Collective vigilance will neutralise these conspiracies and maintain the unity of the Iranian people," he added.
Judges Razini and Moghiseh played direct roles in "crimes against humanity through the massacre of political prisoners in the 1980s, and they continued their crimes until the last days of their lives by upholding the death sentences of political opponents in the Supreme Court," Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Director of the Iran Human Rights group, wrote on X.
"The importance of documenting the crimes of the 1980s by the Islamic Republic becomes clear when we realize that those who were directly involved in the massacre of political prisoners in that decade will no longer be around to be held accountable for their crimes in a fair post-Islamic Republic court," he added.
Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate, reacted to the deaths of two judges on Instagram, writing: “Their murder today is the result of the judiciary’s behavior, practices, and repression. Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”
Ebadi said that the deaths of Razini and Moghiseh have eliminated an opportunity to shed light on part of the establishment's crimes. She emphasized that the path taken by the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, amplified or directed by its security apparatus, inevitably leads to such incidents.
The human rights lawyer also noted that the Islamic Republic has already referred to Razini and Moghiseh as “martyrs” and added: “Justice for Moghiseh, Razini, and all those involved in the Islamic Republic’s crimes requires public, transparent, and fair trials — something they have always feared.”
Ebadi concluded by highlighting the judiciary’s history of increasing executions and carrying out mass arrests in response to actions by the United States and Israel. She warned that, in retaliation for the deaths of these two notorious judges, the regime may now intensify its crackdown on prisoners.
"Some false and fabricated narratives and reports are being circulated, all of which are entirely baseless and lack credibility," the Judiciary's statement, published on Mizan, read.
"Apart from the martyrdom of the two prominent Supreme Court judges, only Martyr Razini’s security guard was injured," it added.
Nearly all local media in Iran initially reported that a third judge had been targeted and hospitalized but did not succumb to injuries.
