Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners" in English language version.
To date, the exact number of those killed is unknown but minimum estimates put the death toll at around 5,000. The real number could be higher, especially because little is still known about the names and details of those who were rearrested in 1988 and extrajudicially executed in secret soon after arrest.
"In 1989 Amnesty International recorded over 1,500 executions announced for criminal offences, more than 1,000 of them for drug-trafficking offences." 1987: 158; 1988: 142; 1989: 1500; 1990 January-June: 300
It is estimated that as many as 30,000 individuals may have been executed at that time, in response to a religious edict issued by Ayatollah Khomeini that there was no room for apostates in his Islamic republic. Ayatollah Montazeri also alluded to this tragedy in his memoirs (published in 2001) and the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center's detailed report on the executions notes that estimates of those killed range from 1,000 to 30,000. See IHRDC, Deadly Fatwa: Iran's 1988 Prison Massacre (New Haven, CT: IHRDC, 2009). The insider's account is provided by Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Khatirat-i Ayatollah Montazeri, Majmu'iyyih Payvastha va Dastnivisha [Memoir of Ayatollah Montazeri, the Collection of Appendices and Handwritten Notes] (2001).
The letter from Khomeini to the judiciary is explicit in its demand that the Islamic Republic's political opponents be rapidly eliminated.
...the IRI under the leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was, in effect, attempting to bring about uniformity in its leadership and to consolidate power by eliminating all opposition.
To date, the exact number of those killed is unknown but minimum estimates put the death toll at around 5,000. The real number could be higher, especially because little is still known about the names and details of those who were rearrested in 1988 and extrajudicially executed in secret soon after arrest.
"In 1989 Amnesty International recorded over 1,500 executions announced for criminal offences, more than 1,000 of them for drug-trafficking offences." 1987: 158; 1988: 142; 1989: 1500; 1990 January-June: 300
