Iran paves over mass grave of ’79 revolution victims, converts it into parking facility

A desert-like patch of sand and scrawny trees in the largest cemetery in Iran's capital has been the final resting place for decades for some of the thousands killed in the mass executions that followed Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Now, Lot 41 at the sprawling Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran is becoming a parking lot, with their remains likely beneath asphalt.

Images from Planet Labs PBC show the parking lot being laid over the site, where opponents of Iran's nascent theocracy and others were rapidly buried following their executions at gunpoint or by hanging.

The site, long monitored by surveillance cameras searching for any sign of dissent or remembrance at what officials have referred to as the “scorched section”, has seen state-sponsored demolition in the past, with grave markers vandalised and overturned.

Iranian officials have acknowledged the recent decision to build the parking, without going into detail about those buried there. “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 researched Lot 41. “The decision to convert this section into a parking lot fits into this broader pattern and represents the final phase of the destruction process.”