The Islamic regime paved over the largest cemetery in Tehran, the resting place for the thousands murdered en masse by the regime after the 1979 revolution, according to international reports.
The location of the bodies laid to rest at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, now Lot 41, is currently unknown. Authorities have not confirmed if they moved the remains or laid the asphalt above them.
Images from Planet Labs PBC show that the parking lot’s development began in August.
The Associated Press noted the site had once been the location where the regime had quickly buried the thousands of opponents executed by hanging or shooting.
Iran's abuse of graveyards
Regime authorities have historically monitored the site using surveillance cameras to detect signs of dissent. AP also noted that the cemetery had been victim to a number of state-sponsored vandalisms in the past, with the gravestones and markers overturned and graffitied.
While authorities have long acknowledged plans to convert the site, they have avoided fielding questions on plans for the bodies buried there.
In 2024, the United Nations’ special rapporteur described the state's attempts to destroy the graveyard as an effort to “conceal or erase data that could serve as potential evidence to avoid legal accountability” regarding its actions.
“Most of the graves and gravestones of dissidents were desecrated, and the trees in the section were deliberately dried out,” Shahin Nasiri, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam who has researched Lot 41, told AP. “The decision to convert this section into a parking lot fits into this broader pattern and represents the final phase of the destruction process.”
“In this place, hypocrites of the early days of the revolution were buried, and it has remained without change for years,” Tehran's deputy mayor, Davood Goudarzi, told journalists. "We proposed that the authorities reorganize the space. Since we needed a parking lot, permission for the preparation of the space was received. The job is ongoing in a precise and smart way.”
Despite the deputy mayor’s comments, critics have noted that the move breaches Iran’s own legislation on the conversion of graveyards. Families of the dead must normally grant permission for such an action to take place, though reports suggest that the families of the execution victims were not asked.
Mohammad Javad Tajik, who oversees the cemetery, reportedly told Iranian newspaper Shargh that the new parking lot would be convenient for those wishing to visit the new graveyard being built for the casualties of the 12 Day War between Iran and Israel.
Mohsen Borhani, a lawyer in Iran, criticized the decision to pave over the graveyard as neither moral nor legal in an interview with Shargh.
"The piece was not only for executed and political people. Ordinary people were buried there, too,” he said.
While the site came to be the resting place for those murdered when the Islamic regime took power, the cemetery was actually founded nine years before the revolution. There are believed to be between 5,000 and 7,000 remains at the site, including those not considered outlaws by Tehran.