Amnesty International report slams Oberlin professor Mahallati

OBERLIN – A new report by Amnesty International is the latest in a series questioning an Oberlin College professor’s alleged role in covering up a nearly 35-year-old massacre of political and religious dissidents in Iran.

The human rights organization released a 17-page statement Monday questioning the role former Iranian diplomats, including Oberlin College professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, played in the 1988 prison massacres.

Family members of the slain prisoners have demanded the college fire Mahallati. The college has refused to do so.

Mahallati has frequently and publicly denied the allegations.

Amnesty and family members of the slain dissidents said former Iranian diplomats, including Mahallati in his former job as Iran’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, “played a critical role in denying and disseminating misinformation about the prison massacres of 1988, as part of a global cover-up of the mass killings orchestrated by the Iranian authorities,” according to the statement released Monday.

“This cover-up not only robbed those directly affected and society at large of the right to truth, but also contributed to entrenching impunity, compounding the suffering of survivors and relatives, and facilitating the ongoing commission of the crime against humanity of enforced disappearance and other crimes under international law,” the organization wrote.

As Iran’s U.N. representative from 1987 to 1989, Mahallati “played a particularly active role in seeking to undermine credible reports by the then UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and Amnesty International, and to weaken the UN’s response. For instance, he undertook efforts in late November and early December 1988 to block the adoption of a resolution by the UN General Assembly that expressed concern about the mass executions,” according to Amnesty International.

The full Amnesty International report can be read online.

The Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists, or AAIRIA — a group of relatives of the prison massacre victims, some Iranian-Americans, Oberlin College students and alumni, and others — also released a statement in response to the Amnesty International report Monday.

“… we conclude with certainty that Mr. Mahallati was aware of the executions and was in a position to stop them from happening. We find him negligent and complicit for failing to use his position at the UN to draw public attention to the Islamic Regime or Iran’s crimes against humanity, prevent further executions, and mislead the UN,” the group wrote.

The group’s statement further demanded Mahallati be removed from his post and condemned the college “for continually defending a known human rights abuser and failing to meet with the victims’ families, look at their evidence and listen to their stories.” AAIRIA also has conducted numerous protests in Oberlin and elsewhere calling for Mahallati’s firing.

Oberlin College spokesperson Andrea Simakis said she would not be able to get a reply to the Amnesty International report for The Chronicle-Telegram by its deadline Monday.

Mahallati has taught at Oberlin College since 2007, and is the Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies at Oberlin College. He also taught at Princeton, Georgetown, Yale and Columbia universities.