he was in office. Mousavi replied, “We repressed them”. Amnesty's report criticizes Mousavi's response asserting that “without explaining what he is acknowledging ... he focuses on criticizing the July 1988 armed incursion by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).” The report goes on to say: Since 2009, when he re-entered politics as a Reformist opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi’s response when asked about the 1988 prison massacres has often been to avoid commenting or to claim that they took place without the knowledge of his government. In this way, he has tried to justify his failure to stop, investigate or at least condemn the killings publicly. However, documents from Amnesty International’s archives show that the organization repeatedly raised its concerns about reports of mass prisoner executions with senior officials in Mir Hossein Mousavi’s government. Retirement from politics When Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, died in 1989, Mousavi was no longer welcome in the government. It was the start of 20 years of an almost total absence from public life for Mousavi, which many considered as a sign of his disapproval of the established government, though he did sit on two high-level government councils. In 1989, Ali Khamenei named him as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, his membership of which still continues. Mousavi has been a member of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution since 1996. He was also the political adviser of president Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989–1997) and senior adviser of president Khatami (1997–2005). During these years, he partly retired from politics and returned to architecture and teaching, becoming President of the Iranian Academy of Arts, one of the four academies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The main building of the Academy is designed by him. At the same time, he developed his passion for painting and writing poetry. He was a professor at Shahid Beheshti University and later joined the Academic staff of Tarbiat Modares University. His main field is architecture, and buildings such as Kanoon-e Tohid in Tehran, Beynolharamein Bazaar in Shiraz, Haft-e-tir Martyr's tomb in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra, and Salman mosque in the presidential residence are examples of his work. In recent years, he has been more active in painting and has participated in many exhibitions. Presidential candidacy Pre-2009 Mousavi refused to run for the presidency in the 1997 elections, which caused the reformists to turn to his former Cabinet Minister, then