Corpses on the Snow: Journalist Remembers Khomeini's Blessing for 1979 Execution

On Saturday, May 15, IranWire published an audio file related to the shooting of four former generals of the Pahlavi regime in mid-February 1979, shortly after the Islamic Revolution.

The recording includes the charges read against General Nematollah Nassiri, the then-head of Savak (the Shah’s secret police), General Mehdi Rahimi, commander of Tehran Police and Tehran’s then-military commander, General Reza Naji, the military commander of Isfahan, and General Manouchehr Khosrodad, then-commander of Army Aviation, at a kangaroo court in a Tehran primary school. The four are then slaughtered in a hail of bullets.

On Friday, February 16 of that year, Etela'at newspaper published a special edition to report the news, with the front page given over to a report on the execution. It was written by Alireza Nourizadeh, the paper’s then-political editor.

IranWire has previously spoken to ex-journalist Rasoul Sadr Ameli, who was there for 30 minutes of the trial but could not stomach any more. Nourizadeh was the only reporter present at the time of the actual shooting and, now living in London, spoke to IranWire about his memories of that night 42 years ago.

How did you find out about the planned execution and get yourself to the school?

As editor of the political desk, I became acquainted with the clerics who accompanied Khomeini on flights to Tehran. I used to go to Alavi Refah School for reporting purposes. On the morning of Thursday, February 15, 1979, I went to the school to prepare an article: 29 people were tried that day. I was there until about 4:30pm.

Then I got back to the newspaper offices, and from there I went home. It was around 6pm that the late [pro-Khomenei diplomat] Hadi Khosroshahi, who was a friend of mine, called and said, “Alireza, it’ll be fireworks tonight, come here.”

I called the newspaper’s driver and photographer; they came, and we went to the school together. The atmosphere was completely different from when I had left earlier. When Khalkhali [judge Sadegh Khalkhali, chief justice of the Revolutionary Court] saw me, he laughed and said, “Have you come for the funeral?”. He had rolled up his sleeves.

I said, “What's up?”. He said: “Tonight we’ll send them to hell.”

How many people were due to be executed that day?

Khalkhali wanted to execute all 29 of them. But with the mediation of [Revolutionary Council member] Ebrahim Yazdi, the execution of just these four people was confirmed.

I had brought several issues of that day’s Etela'at newspaper with me. I saw Mr. Khalkhali pick one of them up and write on it. “What are you doing?” said Ebrahim Yazdi.

He said: “I want to go to Imam [Khomeini], get permission from him, and send them to hell.”

Yazdi seized on the newspaper and said, “I will go to Imam myself.”

On the third floor of the school was an adjoining corridor to another, next-door building, where Khomeini lived with his entire family: his wife, [sons] Ahmad Agha, Hossein Agha, and others. Yazdi got up and went there, and returned at about 7.30 pm.

There was handwriting on the newspaper. "Fortunately, he agreed that just the four people directly involved in the crimes should be executed," he said.

I said, "But, doctor, what about the trial that has not taken place?"

Yazdi said: "What else can be done? This crazy Khalkhali has written down all the names. Imam was hesitant. As far as we prevented 25 deaths, it is good."

Of course, most of the others were executed in the following days, and only a few survived. I knew a few of them, including the late [ex-prime minister Amir Abbas] Hoveyda, [deputy Imperial Air Force chief] Nader Jahanbani, and [pan-Iranist politician] Dr. Mohammad Reza Ameli.

What happened next?

After that, some of the attendees went to the basement, which was also the school's amphitheater. They watched the film of Khomeini's return to Iran yet again. Then they set the dinner table and brought rice and chicken, and began to eat.

It was about 10.30 pm when they said they were going to take them upstairs. It was very cold and snowy that night. It was a strange situation; God sees that my body still trembles when I remember it. But I always ask myself, "If I didn’t write it, who else would have?"

The situation of each of them was different. Naji broke down and cried. Nasiri was wounded in the neck because he had been hung up in the detention center, but the rope broke, and his voice was hard to hear, and his head and face were injured because of the fists that had hit him. He kept saying: "Ya Ali".

Rahimi stood very strong and powerful. He said “Long live the Shah, long live Iran" several times and was shot. But Khosrodad was the bravest of all: he did not allow them to close his eyes. He said: "Because I am the senior here, I will order the shooting.” And he ordered them to shoot himself.

Some people were crying, each for his own reason. I cried too. "Stop it, it could be to your detriment," the newspaper photographer told me. But I couldn’t believe it. Until then, I didn’t believe the Islamic Republic meant blood, murder, and crime. The Islam I knew from my father and others around me was not like this.

Their families weren’t even informed. They read the news of the death of their loved ones in the newspaper the next day, or else found out through some of members of the Etela'at team before it was published.

How many people were on the roof at the time of the execution? Are any of them prominent figures today?

About 20 people were on the roof. [Conservative politician and former head of Khomenei’s security detail] Mohsen Rafiqdoost supervised; Hamid Reza Naghashian was Mr. Khomeini's bodyguard.

The families of several of the killed Mojahedin-e Khagh [MKO] and Fadaiyan-e Islam members were also present: tor example, the parents of Mehdi Rezaei, a member of the MKO who was executed before the revolution, and the mother of Masoumeh Shadmani, known as Kabiri: a member of the MKO who was arrested in 1974 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Several others who had been informed about it were also there.

But Ayatollah Taleghani [a senior cleric and critic of the Shah who died later in 1979] refused to come despite being informed. Rezaei's father was given a gun to shoot, but he cried and said “I cannot”. Several other family members also refused to shoot. Then four young revolutionaries took charge – but they had covered their faces. The weather was cold and snowy that night; with hats on, jackets and cloths over their faces, their faces were unrecognizable. An officer named Humafar shot at them and the bodies fell on the snow.

Was Ruhollah Khomeini present at the time of the execution?

No, he was not. I think it was around four in the morning when Mr. Khomeini was brought up. He had a satisfied look and a smile and said, "Praise be to God, they have gone to hell. Go and perform the prayer of thanksgiving." Then he went downstairs and some people stood behind him and prayed.

I went straight home, took a shower, and apologized to my Sunni Kurdish wife, who had been an enemy of Khomeini since the beginning. I said: “You were right. I saw Khomeini's real face tonight.”

It was already Friday. With the approval of the Etela'at’s editor-in-chief, I went back to the paper to write the special edition. I wrote as much as possible and published it with together with the pictures of the execution, and of the corpses in the morgue.

Were all these 29 people kept at the school?

Yes; about 60 or 70 people were imprisoned in one of the school halls in very bad conditions. Imagine about 70 senior military, police, parliament and government members all in one room. They couldn’t breathe. Only Hoveyda was kept in a separate room, with his pipe and some of his books. I once took some tobacco and a book in for him. They had turned several of the school classrooms into courtrooms.

What was the role of Ebrahim Yazdi in trials and death sentences?

One or two nights before the execution, Ebrahim Yazdi had tried several of them, including Generals Rahimi and Nasiri, while Rasoul Sadr Ameli was also present on behalf of the Etela'at newspaper.

In the morning he gave me his article, which I edited and published. But on the night of February 15, the night of execution, I must honestly say that Yazdi saved the lives of 25 people. Khalkhali wanted to execute 29 people that night. Yazdi did not allow it; he went to Khomeini and negotiated and only four were executed. The prisoners were later transferred to Qasr Prison, where trials and executions took place, but Yazdi did not intervene any further.

How was the trial of the 29 people that morning?

"You committed a crime, and you are a corrupter on earth," Mr. Khalkhali had told them. Most of these poor people did not even know what 'corrupter on earth’ meant and would ask him, "What does this mean?"

Khalkhali would say to them: "It means you should not even drink water. Your existence on earth spreads corruption, and you should be killed right now."

Even before the executions, people on the roof said they [the generals] should be given water, but they did not give them any; they said they were apostates and corrupters. I recall that only the late Hoveyda and [ex-Pars News Agency head Mahmoud] Jafarian knew Arabic, and understood the meanings of this and moharebeh [“war against God”].

Mansour Rouhani [former Minister of Agriculture under the Shah] saod: "In what war did I engage with God?" Khalkhali said nastily: "You are a Baha'i."

Ahmad Khomeini said to [deputy Imperial Air Force chief] Nader Jahanbani: "You are a foreigner." But he said: "No, all my ancestors were Iranians." I never forgot his noble face. Every time I recall that night, I feel bad.

On the night of the execution, was there no journalist there other than you?

No. Mr. Saber, from the television channel, was not there on the night of the execution. He had gone to the trial a night or two ago, and his photos and pictures had been published many times. But there is no picture of the bodies from that night other than those of Etela'at’s photographer.

How did you feel when, after 43 years, you heard this audio file, which only covers a few minutes from that day?

Honestly, from that night on, my hatred for this regime and Khomeini himself has increased day by day. No one in history, I think, has been more vicious and savage than Khomeini; not even Ghenghis Khan. I saw his face looking at the corpses; I wondered how anyone could see the corpses and the blood, and say with a smile that they had gone to hell and we should go and do the thanksgiving prayer?

Now I wonder why our generation and the previous generation were deceived; why did we not pay enough attention to the historical events of the beginning of Islam; why did we not think clearly. I don’t know. I don’t know what this madness was that fell ipon our souls.

Related coverage:

IranWire Exclusive: Audio File of Generals' Execution Recalls the Horror of 1979 Iran