the process." Massacre Khomeini's order Shortly before the executions commenced, Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued "a secret but extraordinary order – some suspect a formal fatwa." This order led to the creation of "Special Commissions with instructions to execute members of People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran as moharebs (those who war against Allah) and leftists as mortads (apostates from Islam)." In part, the letter reads as follows: [In the Name of God, The Compassionate, the Merciful,] As the treacherous Monafeqin [Mojahedin] do not believe in Islam and what they say is out of deception and hypocrisy, and As their leaders have confessed that they have become renegades, and As they are waging war on God, and As they are engaging in classical warfare in the western, the northern and the southern fronts, and As they are collaborating with the Baathist Party of Iraq and spying for Saddam against our Muslim nation, and As they are tied to the World Arrogance, and in light of their cowardly blows to the Islamic Republic since its inception, It is decreed that those who are in prison throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for the Monafeqin [Mojahedin] are waging war on God and are condemned to execution. Administering of the executions In Tehran the special commission for the executions had 16 members representing the various authorities of the Islamic government – Imam Khomeini himself, the president, the chief prosecutor, the Revolutionary Tribunals, the Ministries of Justice and Intelligence, and the administration of Evin and Gohar Dasht, the two prisons in the Tehran area from which the prisoners were eliminated. The chair of the commission was Ayatollah Morteza Eshraqi. His two special assistants were Hojatt al-Islam Hossein-Ali Nayyeri and Hojjat al-Islam Ali Mobasheri. The commission shuttled back and forth between Evin and Gohar Dasht prisons by helicopter. In the provinces similar commissions were established, but less is known about them. Another description of the administration of the executions has it implemented by a "four-man commission, later known as the 'death committee'." Members were Hossein-Ali Nayyeri (who was then a judge), Morteza Eshraqi (then Tehran Prosecutor), Ebrahim Raisi (then Deputy Prosecutor General) and Mostafa Pourmohammadi (then the representative of the Intelligence Ministry in Evin Prison). Ebrahim Raisi went on to campaign for president of Iran in 2017 as a hard-line conservative where he was criticized for his role in the executions, before being