An Assembly Executed

This footage records a trial held in 1981 at the Islamic Revolutionary Court inside Evin Prison in Iran. The defendants are seven members of the elected leadership body of the Iranian Baha’i community, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iran. They are on trial solely for being Bahá’ís.

According to the official verdict, the proceedings lasted two hours and thirty minutes. The surviving footage captures nearly two hours of the trial. Its visual quality is poor, largely because the film remained hidden for many years.

Comments made by the judge during the session indicate that the trial may have been filmed for possible broadcast on national television. For reasons that remain unclear, however, the recording was never aired.

Years later, someone who had worked within the Revolutionary Court system passed the footage to a Baha'i friend in Iran. A copy eventually reached the Taslimi Foundation, which later shared it with the BBC. The BBC used the material to produce the documentary Revolutionary Justice in Iran, broadcast in 2015.

Only seven male members of the National Spiritual Assembly appear in the courtroom footage. However, the official verdict names an eighth member, Mrs. Zhinous Nemat (Mahmoudi), as having been tried by the same court. According to the ruling, she and the seven men were sentenced to death and immediately executed by firing squad.