Yousef Saanei

As Attorney General, Yousef Sanei has been responsible for the unfair trials and executions of many political prisoners. He has also been directly involved in the deliberate and systematic persecution of political prisoners. In a speech in July 1983, Sanei stated his opposition to the release of political prisoners and said:

"Today, when we are living in peace and the authorities who are safe today, those counter-revolutionary parents shouldn’t ask the authorities for the release of their children. Whenever we think of such issues, we should think of the party’s massacre. […]

Their imprisonment is a divine pleasure. Let there be no move that we, God forbid, speak against the Revolutionary Court. Today, with the efforts of the brothers of the IRGC and the committees and the police and the revolutionary courts, we are here, otherwise they have no mercy.

[They] are traitors to the country, and they do not have mercy on their own parents, and they must be punished. Here, as an official of the judiciary, I kiss the hands of those loved ones who captured the counterrevolutionaries and took them to court and punished them. Well done . Let us not be pessimistic about the revolutionary courts."

In another speech in 1985, he explicitly endorsed and encouraged the harassment and torture of political prisoners:

"The counter-revolutionaries’s hope in Evin must be cut off. Evin must be an environment of fear. Evin must be an environment of terror. It is wrong to say, no one should be afraid, no, sir! The counterrevolutionaries should be tremble with fear when they hear that they are going to Evin.”

Impunity: Torture and Sexual Violence Against Female Political Prisoners in the Islamic Republic First Report: 1960s, Shadi Amin Shadi Sadr, Justice for Iran Organization, p.17

Yousef Sanei, Jomhuri Eslami newspaper, July 1983

The position of the Iranian authorities at the time regarding the executions of the 1980s, BBC Farsi, September 12, 2013

https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2013/09/130912_25_anniversary_authoriteis_speech_nm

Yousef Saanei, as a member of the Board of Trustees for overseeing the properties at the disposal of the Supreme Leader and one of the founders of the Executive Headquarters of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EHIKO), has been responsible for confiscating and selling the property of the Iranian citizens especially religious minorities, and political opponents of the Islamic Republic, in an illegal and unjust process.

On May 26, 1989, in a letter, Ruhollah Khomeini appointed Yousef Saanei along with Mehdi Karroubi and Habibollah Asgar Oladi, as his trustees regarding the implementation of Article 49 of the Constitution and was responsible for collecting and administering property at the disposal of the Supreme Leader, including confiscated property of Iranian citizens especially religious and ethnic minorities and political opponents.

In a joint letter to Khomeini on May 10, 1989, Saanei asked him to appoint Hossein Ali Nairi as the religious judge to handle Article 49 cases, especially confiscated property, and to allow the case to be heard without due process and legal proceedings of a fair trial. He writes in this letter:

"It is requested that in case of approval, in order to advance the affairs and not lose the rights of the poor and needy, you instruct the relevant judicial authorities to handle these cases outside the cumbersome rules of the courts according to the rules of Sharia."

Saanei is also responsible for confiscating the property of the wife and children of Hussein Vahdat Hagh, a Baha'i citizen who was executed for his religious beliefs on March 30, 1981.

Based on the verdict issued by the Third Branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran - Evin on May 19, 1991, the court, citing a decree dated September 7, 1989, in the case of the property of Vahid, Shahab and Ruhid Vahdat Hagh, sons of Hossein Vahdat Hagh Declaring these citizens "followers of the heretical Baha'i sect" and declaring their property "disrespectful", he voted to confiscate all the family's property. The document also states: "The returned property will be given to the esteemed representatives of the Supreme Leader, Messrs. Hojjat al-Islam and Muslims, Hajj Sheikh Mehdi Karroubi and Hajj Sheikh Hassan Saemi [meant Yusuf Saanei]."

Decree on appointing representatives of property at the disposal of the Supreme Leader,

Sahifa Ruhollah Khomeini, Volume 21, p 365

Image of the court ruling dated 28 May 1991, case file 524/61 / M / 22634

Letter to the President of the Supreme Court, Sahifa Ruhollah Khomeini, Volume 21, p 304.

Stolen Lands: Executive Headquarters of Imam Khomeini’s Order, Report by the Justice for

Iran, 2021