The 1979 post-revolution executions in this note begin with the 15 February 1979 Revolutionary Tribunal session at Refah School in Tehran, four days after the monarchy fell. Officers and officials of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's state were tried through the night and shot. State radio called them "the executioners of the previous regime." That is the new government's line, not a finding. Catalog titles that name Refah School executions, Pahlavi officials killed there, or "Post-Revolutionary Executions 1979" are gathered here. They are not merged into the March 1979 women's protests.¹²

15 February 1979

The New York Times, writing from Tehran on 16 February, reported that revolutionary authorities had put four generals to death and that about 20 other high-ranking officers and officials were said to face death sentences. Newspaper reports that day, not confirmed on the wire, also said two former civilian officials had been executed. The most prominent of the four, the paper wrote, was the former chief of SAVAK. The new leadership warned against private vengeance while its own tribunal was already killing.¹

The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center's memorial for General Mehdi Rahimi places his killing on 15 February 1979 at Refah School. It cites Ayandegan and Keyhan of 16 February and a communique of the Extraordinary Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal. Ayandegan, as summarized there, said the tribunal sat at Alavi High School No. 2 (Refah) for about 10 hours. Sadeq Khalkhali, the first post-revolution Shari'a judge, later described the defendants as the first group tried after the revolution. The hearings were not independent courts.²

Names in contemporary reporting were not always spelled the same way. This note follows the Boroumand file for Rahimi and the Times account of four generals, without treating either list as a complete roll of everyone killed in the following months.

After Refah

The Boroumand Center, citing later compilations of Revolutionary Tribunal defendants through 12 August 1979, places Refah at the start of a wider sequence, not as a one-night exception. That later list is evidence of months of show trials. It is not a count of deaths at Refah School on 15 February.²

This archive holds Executions at Refah School and Execution of Pahlavi officials at Refah School.

This archive

"Execution of Pahlavi officials at Refah School," "Executions at Refah School," "Post-Revolutionary Executions 1979," and "Mojahedin march to Refah School" are gathered here. Individual later executions that do not name 1979 or Refah stay on their own pages.