‘I wished my mother a speedy execution, I didn’t want her to be tortured’

Iranian academic expat describes the cruel oppression endured by Baha’i community and their women at the hands of the Islamic regime

THE TELEGRAPH

Mona Mahmoudi’s parents were among the first members of Iran’s Baha’i religious minority to be executed under the Islamic Republic’s decades-long crackdown.

When her mother, the country’s first female meteorologist, was arrested alongside seven others, her daughter wished for her speedy execution.

“I knew they were going to be executed and I was hoping it would happen sooner than later,” she told The Telegraph during a Baha’i event in London.

“There were so many cases of Baha’is who were being tortured in prison,” she added, “and I did not want them to be tortured.”

Mrs Mahmoudi was in east London for an event remembering the 40th anniversary of a dark chapter in the persecution of Baha’is in Iran – the public execution of 10 Baha’i women, including a 17-year-old girl.

The oppression of women in Iran had been endured by the Baha’i community “for many many years”, Omid Djalili, a British-Iranian comedian who is a Baha’i, told The Telegraph.

“The regime is trying very hard to stop people from figuring about the prosecution against the Baha’is,” he said.

Mrs Mahmoudi says her family had a “nice and easy life” before the 1979 revolution, which brought the clerical establishment into power.

The five-member family, with her meteorologist mother and children’s TV show presenter father at the helm, would travel to the seaside in northern Iran on the weekends in the 1970s.

The Islamic Revolution, like a sudden, violent storm, upended the Mahmoudis’ world. 

Their faith, once a cornerstone of their identity, became a target for the new regime’s wrath.

Overnight, Mrs Mahmoudi’s parents went from respected professionals to persecuted outcasts. 

The couple were fired from their jobs and were asked to pay their years-long salary back to the new government.