Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Baroness Anelay of St Johns on 6 September (HL Deb, col 936), and in the light of the release of the Montazeri audiotape regarding the massacres in Iran in 1988, whether it is still their position that there is little corroborated evidence of such a massacre taking place.

The UK Government opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances and takes any allegations of extrajudicial killings seriously. The Iranian Government has repeatedly denied that a mass execution took place, though we know that between July 1988 and January 1989 executions did take place. However, even with the recording and media reporting on the incident, we have no confirmation of the numbers involved.