DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A man fatally shot two prominent hard-line judges in Iran's capital Saturday in a rare attack targeting the judiciary, state media reported, both of whom allegedly took part in the mass execution of dissidents in 1988.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the fatal shootings of the judges, clerics Mohammad Mogheiseh and Ali Razini. However, Razini's involvement in the 1988 executions had likely made him a target in the past, including a failed assassination attempt in 1999.
Their killings also come as Iran faces economic turmoil, the mauling of its Mideast allies by Israel and the return of Donald Trump to the White House on Monday.
Both clerics served on Iran's Supreme Court, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. A bodyguard for one of the judges also was wounded. The gunman later killed himself, IRNA said.
“According to initial investigations, the person in question did not have a case in the Supreme Court nor was he a client of the branches of the court,” the judiciary's Mizan news agency said. “Currently, investigations have been launched to identify and arrest the perpetrators of this terrorist act.”
In January 1999, attackers on motorcycles hurled either an explosive at Razini's vehicle, wounding him as he left work as the head of the judiciary in Tehran.
Both men had been named by activists and exiles as taking part in the 1988 executions, which came at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq. After Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a U.N.-brokered ceasefire, members of the exiled Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack.
Iran ultimately blunted their assault, but the attack set the stage for the sham retrials of political prisoners, militants and others that would become known as “death commissions.”
International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed, while the MEK puts the number at 30,000. Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out on Khomeini’s orders, though some argue that other top officials were effectively in charge in the months before his 1989 death.
The MEK did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press
