Iran football star relives horror moment he was told wrestler pal was hanged as he demands end to ‘terrorist’ regime
THE friend of a champion wrestler executed in Iran after he was accused of murdering a riot cop has called for an end to the 'terrorist regime'.
Hassan Nayebagha, who played for Iran’s national football team and went to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, has spoken out after Navid Afkari, 27, was hanged for allegedly killing a state security guard in 2018.
On Saturday morning, a colleague ran into my office, clearly distressed.
“Navid was hanged," he said as he burst into tears.
Navid Afkari, a 27- year-old Iranian wrestling champion, was executed after enduring brutal torture for participating in the 2018 anti-regime uprising.
His hanging came despite widespread domestic and international indignation, particularly by renowned athletes and wrestlers across the world.
A shiver went down my spine and I stared at him speechlessly.
I had a mental flash back to June 25 1984 - the day a friend told me that Habib Khabiri had been executed by the mullahs’ regime.
Habib, a close friend, was the popular captain of the Iranian national football team.
He was a few years younger than me, but we played in the same club for years.
We were also on the national squad that led Iran’s first appearance in the 1978 World Cup.
I’ll never forget his beautiful goal against Kuwait in the last qualifying match.
And, against all odds, our game against the Scottish team that had great players like Archie Gemmill ended up in a 1-1 tie.
In 1978, prior to the anti-monarchic revolution, I went to the UK to pursue my graduate studies and eventually made it to the US for post-graduate work in sociology.
After the 1979 revolution, Habib joined Iran’s leading pro-democracy opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK).
He was arrested in 1983, and - like Navid almost 40 years later - was subject to inhumane torture.
Habib and Navid are not the only renowned Iranian athletes who endured the brutality of the fundamentalist regime.
Houshang Montazeralzohour was champion of Iran in 82kg weight class in Greco-Roman wrestling for several years.
We were together at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada.
He was also executed for being a pro-MEK activist.
Over the past four decades, some 120,000 Iranians from all walks of life have been executed - solely for seeking freedom and democracy in Iran.
Contrary to the far-fetched scenarios hyped up by the regime’s apologists and appeasers in the West, the mullahs have not become more moderate as result of concessions made to them by the West in general and Europe in particular.
As popular calls for regime change get louder and the theocracy grows weaker, Tehran has resorted to more violence at home and terrorism abroad in order to survive.
If it were not for the regime’s leaders sensing impunity for its crimes in the eyes of the West, the situation might have been different.
In the summer of 1988, on the basis of a fatwa by Khomeini, the founder of the theocracy, 30,000 political prisoners were massacred in a matter of a few months.
Those executed were either serving their prison sentences on political charges or had already finished their sentences - but were still killed.
Their fate was decided by a three-member 'death commission' during trials that lasted only a few minutes each.
All the Iranian regime’s leaders and senior officials were directly implicated in the massacre.
For instance, Ebrahim Raisi, the current Head of the Judiciary, sent thousands to their deaths as a member of the death commission in Tehran.
The current Minister of Justice is another culprit in this crime against humanity.
Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, was president at the time and has defended the massacre publicly.
Yet there has never been an independent investigation into the 1988 massacre, described by experts and renowned jurists as one of the worst cases of crime against humanity after the Second World War.
'REGIME CANNOT LAST ONE DAY WITHOUT TORTURE AND EXECUTIONS'
The impunity and lack of accountability that the mullahs have enjoyed for so long must finally come to an end.
As the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Maryam Rajavi, has pointed out, the regime cannot survive for a single day without mass suppression, execution and torture.
By killing young protesters like Navid, it seeks to preserve its rule in the face of the Iranian people's uprisings.
But there are vivid signs after Navid's execution that Tehran has already added to the outrage of the Iranian people, in particular the youth.
The medieval regime is not a normal state that can be integrated into the international order.
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The Iranian people have paid an extremely heavy price for the appeasement policies pursued by European countries vis-à-vis the mullahs.
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Silence and inaction are tantamount to giving a green light to, and complicity with, the regime as it continues its atrocities.
As a first step, this coming autumn, the UN General Assembly should be encouraged to call for an independent international investigation into the 1988 massacre.