For the second time since he became president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi has been forced to cancel a visit to Europe due to widespread protests and a demand for his arrest under the law of universal jurisdiction. Dubbed ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ for his direct involvement in the execution of political prisoners in an infamous 1988 massacre, Raisi was forced to pull out of a planned visit to Geneva where he had hoped to address the UN Global Refugee Forum, which began on Dec. 13. Raisi was one of the members of a series of Death Committees, set up by the then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Under a fatwa issued by Khomeini, the death committees were ordered to execute more than 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, most of them members and supporters of the opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran/Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK).

The Refugee Forum is held every four years, with the aim of helping to resolve some of the pressures placed on host countries by large influxes of refugees. It is a disheartening irony that the UN invited Raisi to this conference, given his background as a warmongering murderer, whose regime has fanned the flames of conflict in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, financing, arming and training Hezbollah and Hamas, and causing the very refugee crisis that the UN Refugee Forum seeks to resolve. However, the news of Raisi’s invitation to the event caused global outrage, especially among the Iranian diaspora, and supporters of the Iranian........

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