The 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners were a series of mass executions of political prisoners across Iran. The order for the executions was given by Ayatollah Khomeini and it was carried out by Iranian officials; starting on 19 July 1988 and continued for approximately five months. The majority of those who were killed were supporters of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, but supporters of other leftist factions, including the Fedaian and the Tudeh Party of Iran (Communist Party), were also executed. The killings operated outside legislation and trials were not concerned with establishing the guilt or innocence of defendants. The massacres have been called "Iran’s greatest crime against humanity." According to Amnesty International and other sources, "thousands of political dissidents were systematically subjected to enforced disappearance in Iranian detention facilities across the country and extrajudicially executed pursuant to an order issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran and implemented across prisons in the country. Many of those killed during this time were subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment in the process." The killings have been described as a political purge without precedent in modern Iranian history, both in terms of scope and cover-up. The exact number of prisoners who were executed remains a point of contention. After interviewing the relatives of dozens of prisoners, Amnesty International estimated that the number of prisoners who were executed ran into the thousands; and the then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini's deputy, Hussein-Ali Montazeri put the number of prisoners who were executed at between 2,800 and 3,800 in his memoirs, but according to other estimates, as many as 30,000 individuals were executed. Because the number of prisoners who were going to be executed was extremely large, the prisoners were loaded into forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes in half-hour intervals. Great care was taken to conceal the killings, and the government of Iran currently denies their occurrence. Ayatollah Montazeri wrote to Ayatollah Khomeini saying "A large number of prisoners have been killed under torture by interrogators ... in some prisons of the Islamic Republic young girls are being raped ... As a result of unruly torture, many prisoners have become deaf or paralyzed or afflicted with chronic diseases." There were various motives for the executions of the victims, including that the victims were executed in retaliation for the 1988 attack on the western borders of