Revolutionary Courts: 40 Years of Unfair Trials and Arbitrary Executions

As the new judicial structure of the Islamic Republic was devised, the SCC were not conceived as part of it. However, in 1987, the courts were revived by decree of Ayatollah Khomeini in order to try an outspoken critic of the Iran–Contra affair, Mehdi Hashemi.Faced with disapproval of the unconstitutionality of the SCC, Khomeini in a letter to the Majles of Iran recommended that the special courts start operating within constitutional perimeters after the end of the Iran–Iraq War.