Lot 41 Controversy: Why Is Iran Turning Mass Execution Graves Into A Parking Space?

Lot 41 Iran controversy:  A section of Tehran’s largest cemetery, long associated with victims of mass executions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is being paved over to create a parking lot. The move has triggered sharp criticism from human rights groups and legal experts, who warn that it could erase evidence of past atrocities.

Lot 41: Final Resting Place Of Dissidents

Lot 41 of the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery has for decades been the burial ground for thousands of political prisoners, monarchists, communists and others executed in the early years of the Islamic Republic. Researchers estimate that between 5,000 and 7,000 people may be buried in the area. The section, often referred to by officials as the “scorched section,” has been under surveillance for years. Families of the dead have long complained of vandalised grave markers and trees deliberately dried out. “Most of the graves and gravestones of dissidents were desecrated, and the trees in the section were deliberately dried out,” said Shahin Nasiri, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam who has studied Lot 41. Speaking to AP, he added that turning the site into a parking lot “represents the final phase of the destruction process.”

Satellite imagery reviewed by Planet Labs PBC shows fresh paving work beginning in early August. An image dated August 18 captured nearly half of Lot 41 already covered with asphalt, with trucks and construction material still present. Cemetery officials confirmed the development, telling the reformist daily Shargh that the parking area will serve visitors to a neighbouring section, where authorities plan to bury those killed in the recent Iran-Israel conflict. Tehran’s deputy mayor, DavoodGoudarzi, defended the decision in comments aired on state television. “In this place, hypocrites of the early days of the revolution were buried and it has remained without change for years,” he said. “Since we needed a parking lot, the permission for the preparation of the space was received. The job is ongoing in a precise and smart way.” But, Iranian lawyer Mohsen Borhani told Shargh that the action is neither moral nor legal. “The piece was not only for executed and political people. Ordinary people were buried there, too,” he said.

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UN, Rights Groups Raise Alarm

The development comes months after a UN special rapporteur described Iran’s demolition of cemeteries as an effort to “conceal or erase data that could serve as potential evidence to avoid legal accountability.” HadiGhaemi, executive director of the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran, said: “Impunity for atrocities and crimes against humanity has been building for decades in the Islamic Republic. There is a direct line between the massacres of the 1980s, the gunning down of demonstrators in 2009, and the mass killings of protesters in 2019 and 2022.”

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Behesht-e Zahra, also known as the “Paradise of Zahra,” was inaugurated in 1970 on the outskirts of Tehran. It later became a focal point of the 1979 Revolution. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself visited the site upon returning from exile. After his death in 1989, a golden-domed mausoleum was built there in his honour. Today, Lot 41 stands as a controversial section of this vast cemetery. Families of those executed continue searching for the graves of loved ones, but the newly approved parking project adds yet another barrier to remembrance and accountability.