UN Report on the situation of
| From SMCCDI: daneshjoo.org Current News & Articles
Nov 11, 2004 The Islamic Republic well deserves its title as the world's premier sponsor of state terrorism. Iran has been directly linked to terrorist training camps in Lebanon and the Sudan, and has assisted groups trying to overthrow the governments of Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. This is the reason the United States prohibits military and most commercial ties against Iran. Since the Group of Seven summit in Munich in July 1992, the United States has proposed a strong condemnation of Iranian policies concerning terrorism, human rights, and nuclear weapons. The Europeans, especially the Germans and the French, have opposed the American initiative, leading to its withdrawal. Over 120 Iranian dissidents living in foreign nations have been slain by agents of the Islamic Republic. Listed below are 75 of the most sensational murders abroad which have been linked to the Tehran regime. The Islamic government has addressed several of these murders by saying the victims were killed because they supported the Shah, were attempting to overthrow the mullahs or were religious heretics. On December 7, 1979, Prince Shahriar Shafiq, the Shah's nephew, Princess Ashraf's second son, was walking on a Parisian street carrying groceries home to his sister's apartment when he was shot in the back of the head. In Tehran, revolutionary judge Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali announced the death. "We were lucky," he told reporters. "We were after his mother but got him instead." Khallhaili also bragged that he had personally killed Prime Minister Hoveyda. In July 1980, Former Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar escapes an assassination attempt in Paris, France. A French policeman and a neighbor are killed and one policeman is seriously injured. On July 22, 1980 Ali Akbar Tabatabai was shot three times in the abdomen at his Bethesda home in Maryland by an assassin disguised as a postman. Tabatabai, a former press attache at the Iranian Embassy in Washington, D.C. under the monarchy, had emerged as one of the main critics of the Khomeini regime in the United States and was the leader of the Iran Freedom Foundation. The man who fired the semi-automatic Browning revolver was an African American Muslim who had been paid five thousand dollars for the job. In January 1982, Shahrokh Missaghi is killed in Manila, Philippines. In June 1982, Shahram Mirani is fatally wounded in India. In August 1982, Ahmad Zol-Anvar is fatally wounded in Karachi, Pakistan. In September 1982, Abdolamir Rahdar is killed in India. In 1982, Colonel Ahmad Hamed is killed in Istanbul, Turkey. In February 1983, Esfandiar Rahimi is killed in Manila, Philippines. On February 7, 1984, assassins shot and killed the 64 year old General Gholam-Ali Oveissi, the former Military Governor of Tehran. Also killed was his brother Gholam-Hossei. They were murdered as they left an apartment in Paris. Oveissi's death dealt a major blow to the anti-mullah opposition forces. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the murders. In August 1985, Colonel Behrouz Shahverdilou of the National Movement of Resistance is killed in Istanbul, Turkey. The Colonel was close to former prime minister Baktiar. On September 9, 1985, Mirmanoute Balouch, a former member of parliament
from Balutchistan, was murdered in Karachi, Pakistan. On August 19, 1986, a bomb exploded in a Persian video store in the
Kensington section of London. It killed Bijan Fazeli, the 22 year old son
of Reza Fazelli an opponent of the Islamic Republic who had produced a
number of comedy shows deriding the mullahs as "corrupt and evil." In December 1986, Vali Mohammad Van is killed in Pakistan. In January 1987, Ali-Akbar Mohammadi is killed in Hamburg, Germany. In July 1987, Faramarz-Agha and Ali-Reza Pourshafizadeh are killed and twenty-three persons are wounded in residences of Iranian refugees Karachi and Quetta, Pakistan. On July 7,1987, Amir-Hossein Amir-Parviz, a former Minister to the Shah, is seriously wounded by the explosion of a bomb placed in his car in London, England. On July 12, 1987, the body of Hamid Reza Chitgar of the Iranian Labor Party was discovered in Vienna, Austria. He was employed at the Universit Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, and had disappeared in France on May 19, 1987. On July 25, 1987, Mohamad-Hassan Mansouri was shot in Istanbul, Turkey by two assassins in obscure circumstances while in the company of an Iraqi diplomat, Behman Fadil. The assassins escaped in white Mercedes registered to the Iraqi consulate in istanbul; but a ballistics exam showed the same murder weapon was used to kill Colonel Aziz-Moradi in December 1986. On August 10, 1987, Ahmad Moradi-Talebi, a former Colonel in the Iranian Air Force who had deserted, is gunned down near the Hotel Edelweiss in Geneva, Switzerland. The assassins left a blue Air Force baseball cap behind them, as a signature. On October 2, 1987, Mohamed Ali Tavakoli-Nabavi was killed with
youngest son, Noureddin, outside of his home in Wembley. He had lived in
Britain since 1979 with refugee status. Responsibility for the murders was
claimed by a group calling itself the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. On October 10, 1987, a hotel in Karachi where Iranian opposition members were staying is fire-bombed, killing one person and wounding another. The Pakistan police accused Iran's Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guards. In October 1987, Abol-Hassan Modjtahed-Zadeh of the Iranian opposition is kidnapped in Istanbul, Turkey. His body was discovered on October 11, 1988 bound and gagged in the trunk of a car in Erzeroum, Turkey. The car had diplomatic plates which were traced to Iran’s consulate in Istanbul. The occupants of the car were five Iranian diplomats who were attempting to cross the border into Iran. On October 25, 1988, Abdul Ghani Bedawi is gunned down by an unknown assailant in Ankara, Turkey. He was the second secretary at embassy of Saudi Arabia, and was believed to be an intelligence agent. A professional killer was arrested in March of 1996 for the crime and confessed. He said he was hired by agents of the Islamic Republic. On December 12, 1988, an armed man opens fire on Iranian refugees waiting in line in front of the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Karachi, killing an Iranian refugee and wounding five others. On January 4, 1989, Saleh Abdullah al-Maliki, the third secretary at the Saudi embassy in Bangkok, Thailand was murdered. Responsibility for the killing is claimed by the al-Hijaz Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed Shiite opposition group in Saudi Arabia. On May 4, 1989, Colonel Attaollah Bay-Ahmad Flag of the opposition is killed in his room at the Hotel Astoria in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The assassins used a pistol equipped with a silencer. He had been working with the opposition network inside Iran. On July 12, 1989, Abdol-Rahman Ghassemlou, the 59 year old leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, was in Vienna to negotiate an autonomy agreement with emissaries of President Rafsanjani. At about 7:30 p.m. police discovered Ghassemlou's bullet-riddled body seated in an armchair. His associates Abdollah Ghaderi and Fazel Rassoul were sprawled dead on the floor. The three assassins were quickly arrested but the Austrian authorities let all of them go back to Tehran. In August 1989, Gholam Keshavarz is killed in Cyprus. In September 1989, Sadigh Kamangar is assassinated in the north of Iraq. In September 1989, Hossein Keshavarz, victim of a terrorist attempt, is paralyzed for life. On October 16, 1989, Abdurrahman Shrewi, the Saudi military attach in Ankara is killed by a bomb placed underneath his car. It exploded just before he arrived at his office at the embassy, severing both his legs. On November 1, 1989, Ali al-Marzuq, the last remaining Saudi diplomat in Beirut is killed outside his home in West Beirut. Responsibility claimed by Islamic Jihad, the Iranian-backed military wing of Hezbollah. On February 1, 1990, Abdalrahman al-Basri; Fahd Abdallah al-Bahli, and Ahmad Abdallah al-Sayf are all gunned down in Bangkok, Thailand. They are all suspected Saudi intelligence agents. In February 1990, Hadj Baloutch-Khan is killed by a terrorist commando in Pakistan. In March 1990, Hossein Mir-Abedini is wounded by an armed commando in the airport of Istanbul, Turkey. Radio Tehran claimed responsibility. On April 24, 1990, Dr Kazem Rajavi, a human rights activist and the brother of Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the Iraq-based National Council of Resistance, was assassinated by a four man hit team that opened fire on his car outside his home in Coppet, Switzerland. Two months later, the Swiss Police issued a report saying that the killers carried Iranian government service passports -- "all issued on the same date" -- and flew between Tehran and Geneva on Iran Air. In July 1990, Ali Kashefpour is kidnapped and killed in Turkey. On September 6, 1990, Efat Ghazi is killed in Sweden by a bomb intended for her husband. On October 23, 1990 at 9:30 a.m. Cyrus Elahi, a high-ranking member of the pro-democracy opposition movement, the Flag of Freedom Organization, was assassinated in cold blood. He was hit by six 7.65 revolver bullets. Elahi's body was found in the lobby of his Parisian residence at 8 Rue Antoine Bourdelle. On April 8, 1991, Dr Abdol-Rahman Boroumand, a close adviser to Bakhtiar, was stabbed to death outside his home in Paris. He was an active member of the National Resistance Movement. On May 5, 1991, Safiollah Soleimanpour and Ahad Agha are killed in Suleimanya, Iraq. The Iranian government has admitted the killings. On July 12, 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses is killed in Tokyo. An assassination attempt against Rushdie’s Italian translator was committed a week earlier. He was severely wounded but lived. On August 6, 1991 in Suresnes, France, a three-man commando team sent from Tehran and posing as his supporters, brutally murders the 77 year old former prime minister, Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar and his secretary, Soroush Katibeh. Both men were stabbed to death. Bakhtiar's corpse was found lying on a leather couch, his throat and wrists cut by a kitchen knife. One of the assassins is later arrested in Switzerland and extradited to France. During his 1994 trial he admits that they are Iranian government agents, and they had been trying to kill Baktiar for some time. It was difficult because Baktiar's son was a French police inspector. The other assassins had returned to Iran before they could be apprehended. August 7, 1991, Jawad Mehrani, an arms dealer linked to the Iranian government, was killed in Paris within 24 hours of Bakhtiar. He was in the process of negotiating a large helicopter purchase from Aerospatiale. The French police have speculated that he may have been eliminated by the same hit team because he was aware of details of the Bakhtiar murder. In September 1991, Sad Yazdan-Panah is fatally wounded in Iraq. In December 1991, Massoud Rajavi escapes a terrorist attempt in Baghdad,Iraq. In January 1992, Kamran Hedayati is wounded opening a letter bomb in Vastros, Sweden. He looses his sight and his hands. In May 1992, Shapour Firouzi is killed in Iraq. On June 4, 1992, Akbar Ghorbani (aka Mansour Amini) was abducted and his body was found in a shallow grave on June 16 with its fingernails pulled out and genitals mutilated. Police found explosives in two cars he had been using. Turkish fundamentalists confessed they had been paid by Iranian intelligence to carry out the kidnaping and murder. In July 1992, Kamran Mansour-Moghadam is killed in Suleymania, Iraq. On August 9, 1992, Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a well-known singer and opposition figure, was stabbed by an assassin at his home in Bonn, Germany. On September 17, 1992, Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fatah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan and Nouri Dehkordi are killed at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, Germany. They were gunned down mafia-style while they ate. Despite the German Government's attempts to pressure the Court to refrain from pointing a finger at Tehran, the president of the tribunal, Judge Frithjof Kubsch, declared that the "atrocious murders" were ordered by the "highest state levels". In March 1996, the German Federal Prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant for Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian for having ordered the killings. On December 26, 1992, Major Abbas Gholizadeh is kidnaped in Ankara and later murdered by members of Islamic Action, a Turkish fundamentalist group financed by Iran. In late January 1994, the leader of the group, Mehmet Ali Bilici, admits to having received more than $37,500 for the kidnapping and to having turned Gholizadeh over to Iranian intelligence agents, who are believed to have interrogated him, tortured him, and killed him. He had been a bodyguard of the Shah. On January 1, 1993, Ayatollah Mehdi Haeri narrowly escapes an assassination attempt in Berlin. An Iranian government agent, Fakhrodine Zalikhani, is arrested. On January 24, 1993, Ugur Mumcu, a prominent journalist, is killed by a car bomb which explodes in front of his home at 63, Karli Sokak in Ankara. Prime suspects include members of Islamic Action , an Iranian-backed fundamentalist group in Turkey; and three Iranian diplomats. Mumcu had denounced Iranian subversion in Turkey. In February 1993, fundamentalist terrorists in Turkey admit to have kidnapped and killed Ali-Akbar Ghorbani who had disappeared in June 1992 in Turkey. March 16, 1993, Mohammed Hussein Nagdi is gunned down in his car by assassins riding on a motorbike on a Rome street. He was the local representative of the National Council of Resistance, a front organization for the Massud Radjavi's Mujahidin. He served as military attach to Italy for the Islamic Republic until 1982. In July 1996, the Italian prosecutor asked the Islamic Republic embassy in Rome to lift diplomatic immunity on an individual serving at the Rome embassy at the time of the assassination. In June 1993, Mohammad-Hassan Arbab is killed in Karachi, Pakistan. August 8, 1993, Mohammad Ghaderi was kidnaped and found dead in Ankara, Turkey allegedly by Iranian-controlled agents. On October 11, 1993, William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses is shot three times from behind as he is leaving his home in Oslo, but survives. On January 1, 1994, Aoubakr Hedayati of the Iranian opposition is wounded by a letter bomb. In January, 1994, Taha Kermanj is killed in Corum, Turkey. An Iranian was arrested for killing this Kurdish activist. On January 24, 1994, Naeb Umran Maaitah, the number two diplomat at Jordan's embassy in Beirut, was gunned down in Syrian-controlled West Beirut. Five days later, Jordan expelled 21 Iranian diplomats from Amman. Iranian intelligence is suspected of having planned his killing, which was carried out by elements from the pro-Iranian Hezbollah. On August 1994, Ghafour Hamzei'i is killed in Baghdad, Iraq. On November 12, 1994, Mohammed Ali Assadi was killed in Bucharest, Romania when three assailants burst into his apartment and thrust a two-edged Ninja sword into his back. His wife said she recognized one of the assailants from the Iranian embassy staff. On September 17, 1995, Hashem Abdollahi is murdered when assailants broke into his father's apartment. Hashem was the son of Davoud Abdollahi, the chief witness in the Bakhtiar murder trial. The State Department's yearly report on terrorism speculated his murder "may have been an anti dissident attack." On February 20, 1996, Zahra Rajabi, a senior member of the National Council of Resistance, was killed by five bullets to the head fired at point blank range when gunmen burst into her Istanbul apartment. Killed with her was Abdul-Ali Moradi. On March 4, 1996, Molavi Abdul-Malek, the 45-year old son of Iran's most prominent Sunni cleric, was murdered by two gunmen in a taxi as he was leaving his house in Karachi, Pakistan. Molavi Abdul Malek was a well-known opponent of the regime and was involved in organizing the Balouchi community. He was killed along with an associate, Jamshid Zahi, 25. A Pakistani woman passing by was also wounded. On March 7, 1996, Hamed Rahmani was killed while driving to his office in central Baghdad. The Iraqi government said it was the sixth assassination of a Mujahedin member in Baghdad since May of 95. On May 28, 1996, Reza Mazlouman (Kourosh Aryamanesh), a dissident publisher and activist, was found dead in Paris with two bullets in his chest. UN General Assembly Expresses Continued Concern Over Human Rights In Iran And The Treatment Of Religious Minorities UNITED NATIONS -- For the ninth time in ten years, the United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution expressing concern over reports of human rights violations in Iran, also taking special note of the persecution of Bahá'ís there. By a vote of 74 to 25, with 55 abstentions, the General Assembly on 23 December 1994 called attention to the continued reports of high numbers of executions, cases of torture and cruel treatment, and the failure to "meet international standards with regards to the administration of justice." The resolution also expressed concern over "discriminatory treatment of minorities by reason of their religious beliefs, notably the Bahá'ís, whose existence as a viable religious community is threatened." It also noted criticisms over "the lack of adequate protection for the Christian minorities," saying that some have "recently been the target of intimidations and assassinations." The Assembly called for continued monitoring of the human rights situation in Iran. Techeste Ahderom, the principal representative of the Bahá'í International Community to the United Nations, praised the General Assembly's action, saying that continued international scrutiny remains the key to security for Iran's 350,000-member Bahá'í community. "The Bahá'ís of Iran, who have faced persecution in Iran solely because of their religious beliefs, are thankful for the support of the international community," said Mr. Ahderom. "A peaceful, law-abiding community, they seek only the right to freely practice their religion, as guaranteed in international human rights instruments that Iran is a party to."
|
Downloads:
|
