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Gross Human Rights Violations
The greatest victims of the fundamentalist regime’s violence have been
the Iranian people. From the very beginning, the fundamentalists began
summary trials and executions. After the coup against liberal Islamist
President Dr. Bani Sadr, the fundamentalists captured all institutions and
a reign of terror began. Somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 political
opponents were executed between June 1981 and December 1982.
According to Amnesty International in the Summer of 1988, Khomeini ordered
the mass execution of about 5,000 political prisoners. About 500 of the
victims of the mass executions were secular leftists who had been in jail
since 1981-83 and had already been given prison terms. The prison
officials asked the leftist political prisoners: “Are you a Muslim? Do
you believe in God? Is the Holy Koran the word of God? Will you publically
recant historical materialism? Do you pray and read the Holy Koran?”
Those who gave negative answers were immediately executed. Somewhere
between 3,500 and 4,500 political prisoners who were supporters of the
PMOI were executed in that several-week period.
The Iranian government death squads have assassinated large numbers of
Iranian dissidents in Europe and elsewhere. It is estimated that the
regime’s death squads have assassinated at least 60 exiled opponents of
the regime. The fundamentalist death squads have also murdered large
numbers of non-violent pro-democracy activists and writers inside Iran. On
November 22, 1998, members of the Ministry of Intelligence entered the
home of the leaders of the Iran Nation Party, Darush Forouhar and his wife
Parvaneh Eskandari-Forouhar, and knifed them to death. Between September
and December 1998, four prominent writers--Pirooz Davani, Majid Sharif,
Mohammad Mokhtari, and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh--were also murdered by
members of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.
In reaction to the gruesome murders of Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, at
least 15,000 protested in Tehran, an event that was unparalleled in
IRI’s history. Immediately, Khatami ordered an investigation into the
chain murders. The reformist wing of the regime announced that “rouge”
members of the Ministry of Intelligence were involved and Saeed Imami (aka
Saeed Islami), who was Deputy Minister of Intelligence, was arrested for
organizing the murders. He died under mysterious circumstances; the regime
announced that he committed suicide. Reformist agents in the Ministry of
Intelligence had tortured him and his wife. A taped interrogation of them
showed that Imami’s wife was physically abused and accused of being an
agent of Israel, the United States, and being part of wife swapping with
other couples among the hardline members of the Ministry. Some hardline
leaders, such as the powerful Hojatolislam Ruhollah Hossenian (Chairman of
the Center for the Publications of Imam Khomeini’s Works), have claimed
that the chain murders were organized by the radical members of the
reformist camp in order to put Khatami and Khamanehi in conflict and bring
about an uprising leading to the overthrow of the entire regime.
All investigations of the chain murders were stopped in early 2000 due to
what the court considered national security grounds. The high-ranking
fundamentalists who ordered the murders remain free while the attorney for
the families of the victims, Dr. Nasser Zarafshan, has been sentenced to 5
years in jail plus 50 lashes.
According to a report by the Kurdish Democratic Party-Iran published in
the U.N. Commission on Human Rights report, the fundamentalist regime
killed about 40,000 Iranian Kurdish civilians and another 5,000 guerrillas
of KDP-I. Moreover, hundreds of Kurdish villages were totally destroyed or
emptied of their inhabitants and the regime carried out indiscriminate
shelling of Kurdish villages.
The fundamentalist regime has the unfortunate claim of committing the
highest per capita executions in the world and in some years the highest
number in absolute numbers. During the First reign of Terror (June
1981-December 1982) and the Second Reign of Terror (Summer 1988), the
regime executed more political prisoners than all executions recorded
worldwide. According to Amnesty International, in the first eight months
of 1989, of the 1,600 executions recorded worldwide, 1,200 occurred in
Iran. In other words, for this eight-month period, Iran, with 1 percent of
the world population accounted for 75 percent of all executions recorded.
There is no freedom of expression in Iran, and even journalists who mildly
express criticisms are harshly repressed. Reporters Without Borders states
that: “...120 newspapers have been banned since 2001, more than 50
journalists have been detained and 11 are still in detention, making Iran
the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East.” RWB pointed out
to the EU officials who were negotiating with the fundamentalist leaders:
“This dialogue, launched in 2001, has not yet led to any decrease in
repression but it allows that Iranian regime to maintain ‘good
relations’ with the European countries.”
Torture is used routinely and extensively by the fundamentalist regime to
punish citizens for merely expressing views. For example, Ahmad Batebi, a
pro-democracy student, has been imprisoned since July 1999 and has been
terribly tortured merely for holding the bloodied t-shirt of his friend
during the pro-democracy demonstrations at Tehran University in July 1999.
Among the myriad forms of torture is the rape of young daughters of
political prisoners as well as the torture of young sons in order to force
confessions (and perhaps gather information). Helmut Szimkus, the German
engineer who spent five years (1989-94) in Evin Prison on charges of
spying for Iraq (which he later admitted to when freed) was witness to
many such incidents of torture. In an interview he granted to the German
magazine, Focus, Szimkus reported: “One time these guys (the torturers)
raped a nine-year-old girl .... The parents had to watch ... the father
shook and rattled so badly that he could no longer sign the espionage
confession they put before him.” Szimkus added, “Once they took on a
boy. Do you know how an innocent child screams when he is tortured? His
parents were right there in the next cell, it drove them up the wall.”
A report published by the Human Rights Group of the British Parliament
(House of Commons) quotes from Mr. Sarmast Akhlagh Tabandeh, a former
prosecutor of the Revolutionary Guards in the city of Shiraz, as saying:
"The general rule is that virgin girls have to be sexually raped
prior to execution. The prison administrators write the names of the
Revolutionary Guard members of the firing squad as well as the names of
administrators present on pieces of paper and a lottery is held among
these names.... The night before execution, a sedative drug is injected
into the virgin girl and the winning Guard would rape her.... The day
after the execution the prison Shariah judge sends a marriage certificate
along with a box of pastries to the family of the girl."
The fundamentalist regime has denied that its agents have engaged in
terrorism, although in many Western European courts, its agents have been
arrested and convicted and imprisoned for assassination of Iranian
dissidents. The regime has also used its proxy, the Lebanese Hezbollah, in
assassinations in Europe. One infamous case is the Mykonos assassinations
in Berlin where a German court convicted officials of the fundamentalist
regime for the murder of four Iranian dissidents. According to Parviz
Dastmalchi, who survived the assassination attempt and is regarded as one
of the foremost scholars on the event:
"In the weeks following the assassinations, several persons were
arrested, among them one Iranian and four Lebanese citizens. The arrested
person who was the main organizer of the terror is Kazem Darabi Kazerouni
who was sentenced to life in prison and in currently in a prison in
Berlin. Kazem Darabi Kazerouni is a member of VEVAK [the Ministry of
Intelligence and Security of the Country] and a member of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards. ...The liaison between Kazem Darabi Kazerouni and
the VEVAK in the country [Germany] was a person in Bonn named Hassan
Javadi who was a diplomat. He [Hassan Javadi] left the country in October
1989 and was replaced with Morteza Gholami. Also Kazem Darabi Kazerouni
was in contact with Mr. Amani Farahani, the Consul-General in Berlin whose
main duty was to gather intelligence on Iranian opposition and other
related intelligence work. Mr. Darabi was a member of the Muslim Student
Association in Europe, in the Berlin branch. The Muslim Student
Association was one of Hezbollah organizations in Europe that the
intelligence organizations of the regime hired its agents from among them.
Other colleagues of Darabi in this group were Farhad Diyanat Sabet Gilani
and Bahman Berenjian, both of whom were also members of VEVAK. Mr. Darabi
in 1982 along with 85 members of Hezbollah of Iran and Lebanon attacked a
dormitory occupied by Iranian students in West of Mainz, which resulted in
the death of one person and injury of several others. Darabi was arrested
then and convicted and sentenced to 8 months imprisonment and expulsion
from Germany. But with the intervention of Iran’s Ambassador in Bonn, he
was released.
The terror team stayed in Darabi’s house for two days and then stayed in
a second house belonging to Bahman Berenjian.
... Another person who was arrested is Mr. Abbas Rayel who is Lebanese.
This is the person who shot the last bullets to finish off the murder
victims. In the years 1985 and 1986 in a camp belonging to the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards close to Rasht, he was given terrorist training for
six months and he was a member of Lebanese Hezbollah. He was convicted in
the court and sentenced to life and is currently in prison.
Another person who was arrested is Youssef Amin who was guarding the
entrance door of the restaurant (the terrorist who closed the door and
stood in front of the door). This person, like Abbas Rayel, is also a
member of Lebanese Hezbollah and received terrorist training close to
Rasht. He was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment.
Two other persons were also arrested. One is Mr. Mohammad “Idris” and
the other one is Mr. Ataollah Ayad, the first one a member of Lebanese
Hezbollah and the other one a member of Shia Amal of Lebanon. These two
were in the organizing section of the operations. There was one other
person who is a member of Lebanese Hezbollah whose name is Ali Sabra who
was responsible for buying a car. Sabra was able to escape Germany and go
back to Lebanon and currently is one of the personal security guards of
Sheikh Fazlollah, the leader of Hezbollah of Lebanon. Another person is
Abu Jafar also known as Abu Heydar who was also a member of Lebanese
Hezbollah, which was created in 1982 with budget and training of its
cadres by the Islamic Republic. He was the driver of the get-away car of
the terrorist who carried out the operations at Mykonos restaurant. After
the operations, he escaped to Lebanon and then to Iran and is currently
employed in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
But the most important of them all was the person who was not arrested was
a person with the name Abdol-Raham Bani-Hashemi who was also know as Abu
Sharif. He was the main person with machine gun who was leading the
operational team. He is a highly trained terrorist who works directly
under Fallahian [then Minister of Intelligence]. On August 18, 1987, he
had assassinated an officer of Iranian air force pilot named Talebi in
Geneva. After the assassination in Berlin, Abu Sharif goes to Iran through
Turkey and was awarded a Mercedes Benz. In addition, he is given shares of
several factories belonging to VEVAK and other bonyads.
... At the court it was brought out that none of the assassins knew the
murder victims and did not have any personal animosities. Therefore, they
were given a mission from someone or some ones. In the court proceedings,
and after the witness accounts of Mr. Abol-Qassem Mesbahi, who was one of
the senior officials of VEVAK and the Director of Terror Network in
Western Europe, it’s become clear (he provided testimony) that these
terrors both inside and outside Iran were ordered directly by Ayatollah
Khomeini as long as he was alive, and after his death, a committee was
established called Special Committee. This Special Committee would make
decisions on who should be eliminated in the opposition inside Iran and
outside Iran. The head of the committee is the Supreme Leader Ali
Khamanehi and includes President, Minister of Intelligence, Foreign
Minister, Head of Council of Guardians, and Head of IRGC. The decision to
assassinate is made by the Special Committee and then can be carried out
with the consent of the Supreme Leader. For implementation, the order is
forwarded to another committee called Qasr Firooz Committee. The Qasr
Firooz Committee draws up a plan for the implementation of the murders and
a copy is sent to Supreme Leader for his approval and another to the
President for his approval."
The use of Lebanese assassins to kill Iranian opposition members was not
new. In 1981, the regime has used Anis Naghash, a Lebanese, to assassinate
Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar. The would-be assassin failed in his attempt to kill
Bakhtiar, but in the process killed a French policewoman and a French
bystander. Ali Akbar Velayati, the IRI’s Foreign Minister, heavily
lobbied the French government, which agreed to extradite the convinced
killer to Iran. The fundamentalist regime death squad, however, succeeded
in their second serous attempt ten years later. On August 6, 1991, three
members of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps’ death squad killed Dr. Bakhtiar and his
assistant, Mr. Soroush Katibeh in their Paris residence. One of the
assassins was arrested, convicted and imprisoned in France; two other
members of the assassination team, Fereydoun Boyerahmadi and Mohammad
Azadi, succeeded in escaping to Iran.
Another assassin given support by IRI is David Belfield, an American who
had converted to Islam. He assassinated Ali Akbar Tabatabai (a diplomat
who had served under the Shah) on July 22, 1980 on the doorsteps of his
Bethesda home. He escaped to Iran and has been provided with refuge, and
financial rewards. He changed his name to Daoud Salahuddin. In a 1996
interview broadcast by ABC, he boasted to have assassinated Mr. Tabatabai.
He is a movie actor in Iran and played in the movie “Kandahar.”
The officials of the fundamentalist regime simply lie about their
terrorism against dissidents. They do so with religious justification; in
Shia Islam, the concept of “taghiyeh” allows Muslims to lie in order
to advance their interests. Despite clear evidence, the fundamentalist
officials continue to deny their involvement although they have lobbied
the European government to release the convicted assassins and allow them
to return to Iran. And,
in fact, many assassins have returned to Iran.
The fundamentalist regime responds to the evidence of gross human rights
violations by asserting that these human rights norms are Western values
and not Islamic values and are used by the United States as political
weapons against the fundamentalist regime. The regime counters U.S.
charges with its own charges that the United Sates itself has had good
relations with many regimes with similar human rights violations. The EU
has also made its concern over human rights public, but the regime regards
these as mere public relations to mollify European public with mere words;
fundamentalist officials believe Europeans are not serious about human
rights and they place lucrative trade deals far above human rights
concerns.
The regime, however, is unable to respond to Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, and U.N. Commission on Human Rights and has had to employ
various devices to hide repression and in some cases to actually reduce
repression in order to reduce the international problems. Terribly
dependent on the sale of crude oil and natural gas and the importation of
food and other basics, the regime is fearful of U.N. Security Council
imposed economic sanctions advocated by the United States and resisted by
EU countries that on the one hand benefit handsomely from lucrative trade
while under pressure for dealing with one of the worst violators of human
rights. Thus, the regime’s need to appear responding to concerns over
human rights violations is essential in undermining U.S. efforts and
allowing the Europeans’ justification to continue their
“engagement,” “constructive dialogue,” and “critical
dialogue,” referring to continuing profitable trade deals while
expressing concern over gross human rights violations.
Internal factionalism, international human rights campaigns (by NGOs and
governments alike), and brave resistance by pro-democracy Iranians inside
and outside Iran have undermined the ability of the fundamentalist regime
to torture and assassinate dissidents with the impunity it enjoyed before
1997. The prevalence of cell telephones and the Internet allow
instantaneous reporting of events by wire services (Reuters, Agence France
Presses, Associated Press) and global media (BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, Radio Farda, Voice of America), which bring the news to tens of
millions of radio listeners and satellite television watchers inside Iran
and to millions more abroad via the Internet, all of which put tremendous
pressure on the fundamentalist regime. The case of Zahra Kazemi
illustrates the inability of the regime to eliminate dissent with the
impunity it once did.
Ms. Kazemi, a 54-year-old Iranian-Canadian photojournalist living in
Montreal was arrested in front of Evin prison on June 23, 2003, for taking
photos of families of political prisoners. She was interrogated for
several days and then died while in custody on July 10, 2003. The hardline
judiciary initially gave the cause of death as stroke. An investigation by
the reformists revealed that she had died due to sever injury to the head
caused by being beaten by a blunt object under interrogation. Her son
residing in Canada demanded her body to be returned home to Canada for
autopsy and burial. The regime refused and buried her in Iran. Later, Ms.
Kazemi’s mother said the regime had pressured her to bury her in Iran
instead of sending her body to Canada.
The Canadian government, PEN, Reporters Without Borders, World Association
of Newspapers, the World Press Freedom Committee, Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, and Iranian human rights activists put enormous
pressure on the regime. These pressures increased intra-elite finger
pointing in Iran. The Ministry of Intelligence (under the control of
reformists) pointed its finger at the Judiciary as the agency under whose
custody Ms. Kazemi died. The Judiciary (under the control of hardliners)
blamed an interrogator of the Ministry of Intelligence for the torture to
death of Kazemi. The 6th Majles made an investigation and found that the
right-wing hardline judge Saeed Mortazavi (known as the “butcher of
press” for his closing down of over 80 reformist presses between 1998
and 2004) had personally interrogated Ms. Kazemi. The Judiciary put
Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, a low-ranked interrogator of the Ministry of
Intelligence, on trial for the “semi-intentional murder” of Ms. Kazemi.
A team of four brave lawyers led by Shirin Ebadi (the 2003 Nobel Peace
Prize laureate) represented the family of Ms. Kazemi, which was determined
to prevent a cover-up of the crime. Ms. Ebadi held the hands of Ms. Ezzat
Kazemi, the mother of the murder victim, and escorted her to and from the
court. At the trial, Ezzat Kazemi told the court that her daughter had
been “tortured to death.” She told the court that she has seen the
body. She added: “There were burns on my daughter’s chest, her fingers
and toes and nose were broken.” On the second day of the trial, the
judge announced abruptly that the trial has ended. Shirin Ebadi walked out
of the court and told the media outside: “This court is unacceptable.
The indictment is flawed and incomplete. A verdict issued based on this
hearing won’t be fair. We left the court in protest.” Mohammad
Seifzadeh, another lawyer in the team, told reporters: “It’s clear
that the person who inflicted the blow is free and the person who hasn’t
done so is standing trial and will later be acquitted and the whole crime
will be covered up.”
The regime initially refused to allow international observers including,
Canada’s ambassador, to observe the court proceedings. Iran’s Foreign
Ministry had stressed that the case was a domestic issue and that the
presence of foreign observers was “unacceptable” and a violation of
international principles. However, after Canada announced that it would
recall its ambassador, the regime backed down and allowed Canada’s
ambassador to IRI, Philip MacKinnon, to be present in the court and
observe the proceedings on Saturday, July 17, 2004. However, by the
following day, Sunday, July 18, the regime changed its mind and kept the
Canadian ambassador and other foreign diplomats in Tehran (Dutch
ambassador Hein De Vries and senior diplomats from Britain and France) out
of the court while the judge dismissed the motions of the defense team and
ended the trial. The Canadian ambassador was kept outside the courtroom
standing under the sun for about 90 minutes. While the hardline judge
abruptly ended the case while keeping Canadian ambassador outside
(although he was given assurance that he could attend and he was allowed
in the court on the first day of the proceeding) the Foreign Ministry
spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi (under the control of reformist wing) defended
the judge’s decision. Asefi said “Zahra Kazemi was Iranian, and
Canada’s insistence that the lady was Canadian does not change
anything.... We had said from the beginning that it was up to the judge to
decide whether the court will be held in public or in camera. From the
very beginning, we opposed the idea of sending a Canadian observer to the
court and we still oppose that. The issue of Zahra Kazemi will not affect
our relationship with Canada because Zahra Kazemi was an Iranian citizen
and this had nothing to do with Canada.” The Canadian Foreign Minister,
Bill Graham, then recalled Canada’s ambassador and issued the following
statement: “I am disappointed but not surprised by this flagrant denial
of due process. Ambassador MacKinnon will be returning to Canada
immediately.... I will be consulting with Ambassador MacKinnon on our next
steps.”
A few days earlier, the hardline judiciary had ordered a reformist daily,
Vaghaeh Etefaghiyeh (which had on occasion published critical reports),
closed because according to sources at the paper officials were upset with
an article the paper published about Kazemi’s death. All the while, Ms.
Kazemi’s son, Stephan Hashemi, had tirelessly and successfully organized
a large group of human rights activists (Iranian and Canadians) and to put
pressure on the Canadian government to return the body of his mother back
home to Montreal. Iranian opposition groups abroad helped publicize and
mobilize world public opinion to put pressure on the fundamentalist regime
to account for her murder. In the next chapter, I will discuss and analyze
the various opposition groups who have been trying to replace the
fundamentalist regime.
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