Chain murders of Iran
Encyclopedia
The Chain Murders of Iran (قتلهای زنجیره ای), or Serial Murders, were a series of murders and disappearances from 1988-1998 by Iranian government operatives of Iran
ian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way.
The victims included more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens, and were killed by a variety of means – car crashes, stabbings, shootings in staged robberies, injections with potassium to simulate a heart attack – in what some believe was an attempt to avoid connection between them. The pattern of murders did not come to light until late 1998 when a political leader (Dariush Forouhar
), his wife and three dissident writers, were murdered in the span of two months.
Responsibility for the murders is disputed. After the murders were publicized Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Khamenei denied the government was at all responsible and blamed "Iran's enemies". In mid-1999, after great public outcry and journalistic investigation in Iran and publicity abroad, Iranian prosecutors announced they had found the perpetrator. One Saeed Emami
had led "rogue elements" in Iran's intelligence ministry in the killings, but that Emami was now dead, having committed suicide in prison. In a trial that was "dismissed as a sham by the victims' families and international human rights organisations," three intelligence ministry agents were sentenced in 2001 to death and 12 others to prison terms for murdering two of the victims.
Many Iranians and foreigners believe the killings were at least in part an attempt to resist "cultural and political openness" being attempted by reformist Iranian president Mohammad Khatami
and his supporters, and that those convicted of the killings were actually "scapegoats acting on orders from higher" up, with the ultimate perpetrators including "a few well known clerics." In turn, Iran's hardliners — the group most closely associated with vigilante attacks on dissidents in general, and with the accused killers in particular — claimed foreign powers, including Israel
, had committed the crimes.
The murders are said to be "still shrouded in secrecy, and an indication that the authorities may not have uncovered all perpetrators of the chain murders was the attempted assassination of Saeed Hajjarian
, a newspaper editor who is thought to have played a "key role" in uncovering the killings. On March 12, 2000, Hajjarian was shot in the head and left paralyzed for life.
(secretary general of the small opposition party, the Nation of Iran Party
), and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari, whose mutilated bodies were found in their south Tehran
home on November 21, 1998. Forouhar had received 11 knife wounds and Eskandari 24. Their home, which was later ransacked, was thought to be under 24-hour surveillance by the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran, thus casting suspicion on that ministry for at least complicity in the murder.
Approximately two weeks later on the afternoon of December 2, 1998, Mohammad Mokhtari, an Iranian writer, left his residence and failed to return home. A week later his body was identified at the coroner's office. The next to disappear was Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh
, an author and "one of the most active translators of the country," whose body was discovered four days after leaving his office on December 8. Pooyandeh and Mokhtari bodies were both found around Shahriar, a "mini-city" in the south of Tehran, and both had apparently been strangled. On the day Pooyandeh's body was found, December 12, fifty writers called on President Khatami to find the persons behind the crimes.
In the meantime, other suspicious and unsolved murders of dissidents going back a decade were put forward by reformers as connected: "Ahmad Miralaee, Ebrahim Zalzadeh
, Ghafar Hosseini, Manouchehr Saneie and his wife Firoozeh Kalantari, Ahmad Tafazzoli
." In particular, the body of Majid Sharif
, a translator and journalist who contributed to the banned publication Iran-e Farda, had been found on the side of a Tehran road on November 18, 1998, three days before the discovery of the bodies of Dariush Forouhar and Parvaneh Eskandari. His official cause of death was "heart failure."
In the summer of 1995 there had been an unsuccessful attempt to kill a busload of writers en route to a poetry conference in Armenia
. At two in the morning, while most of his passengers were napping, the driver of the bus attempted to steer the bus off a cliff near the Heyran Pass. "When the driver tried to jump out to save himself, a passenger grabbed the wheel and steered the bus back onto the road." The driver tried it a second time, "diving out of the vehicle just as it careened toward the edge of the 1000-foot free fall." The bus hit a boulder and stopped, saving the lives of 21 writers. The driver ran away. The passengers were taken to a nearby Caspian town by authorities, interrogated and warned "to discuss the event with no one".
The person thought to be the first serial victim was Dr. Kazem Sami
Kermani, an "Islamic nationalist and physician" who had opposed the Shah
and served as Minister of Health in the brief post-revolutionary
provisional government
of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan
. He was later a member of the first Majles where he criticized the government for its continuation of the Iran-Iraq War
after the Liberation of Khorramshahr
. He was murdered on November 23, 1988 in his clinic in Tehran by an ax-wielding assailant.
One of the first notable sources to speculate on the cause of the murders was Iran's conservative Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
, the highest ranking political and religious authority of the country and a strong opponent of democratic reform. Khamenei blamed foreign powers, stating "the enemy was creating insecurity to try to block the progress of Iran's Islamic system." Conservative daily newspapers also claimed "foreign sources intend on creating an environment of insecurity and instability in the country," for the killings. In particular, they blamed the Iraqi-based Mojahedin-e-Khalq
terrorist group.
On January 4, 1999, the public relations office of the Ministry of Information "unexpectedly" issued a short press release claiming "staff within" its own Ministry "committed these criminal activities ... under the influence of undercover rogue agents":
Arrested for the dissident murders was Saeed Emami
or Islami, the deputy security official of the Ministry of Information, and his colleagues and subordinate staff: Mehrdad Alikhani, Mostafa Kazemi and Khosro Basati.
According to Indymedia UK, "the agent named as the mastermind behind the assassinations, Saeed Emami, was reported to have killed himself in prison by drinking a bottle of hair remover."
The Iranian press reported that Emami was not only responsible for the deaths of Forouhar, Mokhtari, Pooyandeh, Sharif but also earlier killings in the 1980s and 1990s of
Saidi Sirjani, the Mykonos restaurant assassinations
, the unsuccessful 1995 attempt to stage a bus accident in the mountains and kill 21 writers, and the unexpected death of Ahmad Khomeini
, (Ayatollah Khomeini's son). Human Rights activist Shirin Ebadi claims Emami's "friends reported that he belonged to a notorious gang of hard-core religious extremists who believed that the enemies of Islam should be killed."
Saeed Emami's arrest was not revealed, however, until June 3, 1999, six months after his reported suicide. Several facts added to skepticism over whether the true culprits of the murders had been found and justice done, namely: Emami was believed to have had "round-the-clock" surveillance while in prison, being the prime suspect of a serial political murder case that aroused the whole country; hair-removal cream available in Iran is unlikely to be lethal when ingested; that Emami's confession was not considered evidence and made public by the presiding judge who deemed it "unrelated to the case;" that
and
According to Iranterror.com, "it was widely assumed that he was murdered in order to prevent the leak of sensitive information about MOIS operations, which would have compromised the entire leadership of the Islamic Republic."
Also noteworthy was the antagonism between the authorities and the victims' relatives. The lawyer for the victims relatives, Nasser Zarafshan, was arrested for "publicizing the case", for which her bail was set at the equivalent of $50,000 as opposed to $12,500 for some of the accused murderers. At least one of the victims' relatives, Sima Sahebi, the wife of Pouyandeh, was also arrested "for publishing a letter criticizing them for not allowing us to hold a memorial of the second anniversary of their death."
Investigative journalists Emadeddin Baghi
and Akbar Ganji
both wrote investigative news articles on the murders. In a series of articles in Saeed Hajjarian
's Sobh Emrouz daily, Akbar Ganji referred to perpetrators with code names such as "Excellency Red Garmented" and their "Excellencies Gray" and the "Master Key".
In December 2000, Akbar Ganji announced the "Master Key" to the chain murders was former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian
. He "also denounced by name some senior clerics, including Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi for having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders for the assassinations." A number of government officials including Mostafa Tajzadeh
, the political deputy of the Ministry of State emphatically rejected this view.
was shot in the head by an assailant but narrowly missed death, ending up paralyzed for life. He is "believed to have played a key role in bringing about ... damaging disclosures" against the sponsors of the chain killings, not only as editor of Sobh Emrouz daily, but as a former deputy minister of intelligence turned reformist. Consequently, "some believe that remnants" of the chain murder "intelligence killer group may have been" behind his attempted assassination.
About the same time, Akbar Ganji
attended the 'Iran After the Elections' Conference
in Berlin. Upon return he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, to be followed by five years in exile (later reduced to six years imprisonment and no exile) for "retaining classified documents from the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry, insulting the former Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic system." His prison time was marked by hunger strike and dramatic courtroom display of torture marks.
Baghi was sentenced to three years in prison in 2000 and spent two years.
Shirin Ebadi speculates that the murders were done by a variety of means and surreptitiously to avoid any connection between them and to avoid the attention of the international community. Previous mass killings by the regime "had blackened the reputation" of the Islamic Republic and hindered Iran's efforts to provide jobs and resources for its growing population and "rebuild itself" after the Iran–Iraq War.
and subsequent trial were examined by Roya Hakakian
in her book Assassins of the Turquoise Palace.
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way.
The victims included more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens, and were killed by a variety of means – car crashes, stabbings, shootings in staged robberies, injections with potassium to simulate a heart attack – in what some believe was an attempt to avoid connection between them. The pattern of murders did not come to light until late 1998 when a political leader (Dariush Forouhar
Dariush Forouhar
Dariush Forouhar was a founder and leader of the Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran , a pan-Iranist opposition party in Iran and served as Minister of Labor in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979...
), his wife and three dissident writers, were murdered in the span of two months.
Responsibility for the murders is disputed. After the murders were publicized Supreme Leader
Supreme leader
A supreme leader typically refers to a figure in the highest leadership position of an entity, group, organization, or state, who exercises strong or all-powerful authority over it. In religion, the supreme leader or supreme leaders is God or Gods...
Ayatollah Khamenei denied the government was at all responsible and blamed "Iran's enemies". In mid-1999, after great public outcry and journalistic investigation in Iran and publicity abroad, Iranian prosecutors announced they had found the perpetrator. One Saeed Emami
Saeed Emami
Saeed Emami was the Iranian deputy minister of intelligence under Ali Fallahian, and an intelligence officer under Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. The Islamic government accused him of having independently organized the assassinations of dissidents shortly after he allegedly committing...
had led "rogue elements" in Iran's intelligence ministry in the killings, but that Emami was now dead, having committed suicide in prison. In a trial that was "dismissed as a sham by the victims' families and international human rights organisations," three intelligence ministry agents were sentenced in 2001 to death and 12 others to prison terms for murdering two of the victims.
Many Iranians and foreigners believe the killings were at least in part an attempt to resist "cultural and political openness" being attempted by reformist Iranian president Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...
and his supporters, and that those convicted of the killings were actually "scapegoats acting on orders from higher" up, with the ultimate perpetrators including "a few well known clerics." In turn, Iran's hardliners — the group most closely associated with vigilante attacks on dissidents in general, and with the accused killers in particular — claimed foreign powers, including Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, had committed the crimes.
The murders are said to be "still shrouded in secrecy, and an indication that the authorities may not have uncovered all perpetrators of the chain murders was the attempted assassination of Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...
, a newspaper editor who is thought to have played a "key role" in uncovering the killings. On March 12, 2000, Hajjarian was shot in the head and left paralyzed for life.
Killings
The term "Chain Murders" was first used to describe the murder of six people in late 1998. The first two killed were 70-year-old Dariush ForouharDariush Forouhar
Dariush Forouhar was a founder and leader of the Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran , a pan-Iranist opposition party in Iran and served as Minister of Labor in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979...
(secretary general of the small opposition party, the Nation of Iran Party
Mellat Iran
Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran also known as Nation Party of Iran or Iran Nation Party is a liberal nationalist political party seeking secular democracy and separation of religion and state in Iran.-History:The group was founded by Dariush Forouhar in 1951, which he continued to lead up until...
), and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari, whose mutilated bodies were found in their south Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
home on November 21, 1998. Forouhar had received 11 knife wounds and Eskandari 24. Their home, which was later ransacked, was thought to be under 24-hour surveillance by the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran, thus casting suspicion on that ministry for at least complicity in the murder.
Approximately two weeks later on the afternoon of December 2, 1998, Mohammad Mokhtari, an Iranian writer, left his residence and failed to return home. A week later his body was identified at the coroner's office. The next to disappear was Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh
Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh
Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, was an Iranian author and "one of the active translators of the country" who is most famous for being one of the victims of the Chain murders of Iran....
, an author and "one of the most active translators of the country," whose body was discovered four days after leaving his office on December 8. Pooyandeh and Mokhtari bodies were both found around Shahriar, a "mini-city" in the south of Tehran, and both had apparently been strangled. On the day Pooyandeh's body was found, December 12, fifty writers called on President Khatami to find the persons behind the crimes.
In the meantime, other suspicious and unsolved murders of dissidents going back a decade were put forward by reformers as connected: "Ahmad Miralaee, Ebrahim Zalzadeh
Ebrahim Zalzadeh
Ebrahim Zalzadeh was a dissident Iranian author and editor who was murdered in 1997 in what is thought to have been one of the "chain murders" of dissidents by "rogue elements" in Iran's intelligence ministry....
, Ghafar Hosseini, Manouchehr Saneie and his wife Firoozeh Kalantari, Ahmad Tafazzoli
Ahmad Tafazzoli
Dr. Ahmad Tafazzoli was a prominent Persian Iranist and master of ancient Iranian literature and culture. Professor Tafazzoli was a faculty member of Tehran University....
." In particular, the body of Majid Sharif
Majid Sharif
Majid Sharif was an Iranian translator and journalist who was one of the victims of the Chain murders of Iran. He was a follower of the late Islamist modernist leftist theoretician Ali Shariati...
, a translator and journalist who contributed to the banned publication Iran-e Farda, had been found on the side of a Tehran road on November 18, 1998, three days before the discovery of the bodies of Dariush Forouhar and Parvaneh Eskandari. His official cause of death was "heart failure."
In the summer of 1995 there had been an unsuccessful attempt to kill a busload of writers en route to a poetry conference in Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
. At two in the morning, while most of his passengers were napping, the driver of the bus attempted to steer the bus off a cliff near the Heyran Pass. "When the driver tried to jump out to save himself, a passenger grabbed the wheel and steered the bus back onto the road." The driver tried it a second time, "diving out of the vehicle just as it careened toward the edge of the 1000-foot free fall." The bus hit a boulder and stopped, saving the lives of 21 writers. The driver ran away. The passengers were taken to a nearby Caspian town by authorities, interrogated and warned "to discuss the event with no one".
The person thought to be the first serial victim was Dr. Kazem Sami
Kazem Sami
Dr. Kazem Sami Kermani was Iran's minister of health in the transitional government of Mehdi Bazargan and leader of the Iranian Nation Liberation Movement , an offshoot of Freedom Movement of Iran, a liberal religious-nationalist movement affiliated with National Front of Iran.-Political career:Dr...
Kermani, an "Islamic nationalist and physician" who had opposed the Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
and served as Minister of Health in the brief post-revolutionary
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
provisional government
Interim Government of Iran (1979)
The Interim Government of Iran of 1979 was the first government established in Iran after the Islamic Revolution...
of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan was a prominent Iranian scholar, academic, long-time pro-democracy activist and head of Iran's interim government, making him Iran's first prime minister after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He was the head of the first engineering department of Tehran University...
. He was later a member of the first Majles where he criticized the government for its continuation of the Iran-Iraq War
Iran-Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran, lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the longest conventional war of the twentieth century...
after the Liberation of Khorramshahr
Liberation of Khorramshahr
The Liberation of Khorramshahr was the Iranian recapture of the port city of Khorramshahr from the Iraqis on May 24, 1982 during the Iran–Iraq War. The Iraqis had captured the city early in the war on October 26, 1980. The successful retaking of the city was part of Operation Beit ol-Moqaddas...
. He was murdered on November 23, 1988 in his clinic in Tehran by an ax-wielding assailant.
Alleged perpetrators
On December 20, 1998, a statement was issued in Tehran by a group calling itself "pure Mohammadan Islam devotees of Mostafa Navvab" taking credit for at least some of the killings. The statement attacked reformists and said in part:"Now than domestic politicians, through negligence and leniency, and under slogan of rule of law, support the masked poisonous vipers of the aliens, and brand the decisive approaches of the Islamic system, judiciary and responsible press and advocates of the revolution as monopolistic and extremist spread of violence and threats to the freedom, the brave and zealous children of the Iranian Muslim nation took action and by revolutionary execution of dirty and sold-out elements who were behind nationalistic movements and other poisonous moves in universities, took the second practical step in defending the great achievements of the Islamic Revolution ... The revolutionary execution of Dariush ForouharDariush ForouharDariush Forouhar was a founder and leader of the Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran , a pan-Iranist opposition party in Iran and served as Minister of Labor in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979...
,
Parvaneh Eskandari, Mohammad MokhtariMohammad MokhtariMohammad Mokhtari was an Iranian writer who was murdered on the outskirts of Tehran in the course of the Chain Murders of Iran. He left his residence at five o'clock in the afternoon of December 2 1998, reportedly to buy light bulbs on Jordan Boulevard in north Tehran...
and Mohammad Jafar PouyandehMohammad Jafar PouyandehMohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, was an Iranian author and "one of the active translators of the country" who is most famous for being one of the victims of the Chain murders of Iran....
is a warning to all mercenary writers and their counter-value supporters who are cherishing the idea of spreading corruption and promiscuity in the country and bringing back foreign domination over Iran..."
One of the first notable sources to speculate on the cause of the murders was Iran's conservative Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i is the Supreme Leader of Iran and the figurative head of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and Twelver Shi'a marja...
, the highest ranking political and religious authority of the country and a strong opponent of democratic reform. Khamenei blamed foreign powers, stating "the enemy was creating insecurity to try to block the progress of Iran's Islamic system." Conservative daily newspapers also claimed "foreign sources intend on creating an environment of insecurity and instability in the country," for the killings. In particular, they blamed the Iraqi-based Mojahedin-e-Khalq
People's Mujahedin of Iran
The People's Mujahedin of Iran is a terrorist militant organization that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran....
terrorist group.
On January 4, 1999, the public relations office of the Ministry of Information "unexpectedly" issued a short press release claiming "staff within" its own Ministry "committed these criminal activities ... under the influence of undercover rogue agents":
"The despicable and abhorring recent murders in Tehran are a sign of chronic conspiracy and a threat to the national security. The Information Ministry based on their legal obligations and following clear directives issued by the Supreme Leader and the President, made the discovery and uprooting of this sinister and threatening event the priority action for the Ministry. With the cooperation of the specially appointed Investigatory committee of the President, the Ministry has succeeded to identify the group responsible for the killings, has arrested them and processed their cases through the judicial system. Unfortunately a small number of irresponsible, misguided, headstrong and obstinate staff within the Ministry of Information who are no doubt under the influence of undercover rogue agents and act towards the objectives of foreign and estranged sources committed these criminal activities".
Arrested for the dissident murders was Saeed Emami
Saeed Emami
Saeed Emami was the Iranian deputy minister of intelligence under Ali Fallahian, and an intelligence officer under Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. The Islamic government accused him of having independently organized the assassinations of dissidents shortly after he allegedly committing...
or Islami, the deputy security official of the Ministry of Information, and his colleagues and subordinate staff: Mehrdad Alikhani, Mostafa Kazemi and Khosro Basati.
According to Indymedia UK, "the agent named as the mastermind behind the assassinations, Saeed Emami, was reported to have killed himself in prison by drinking a bottle of hair remover."
Defendant Ali Rowshani admitted murdering Mokhtari and Pouyandeh. But he said he had done so under orders from Mostafa Kazemi, a former head of internal security at the intelligence ministry and another man, Merhdad Alikhani. Another pair of defendants admitted killing the Forouhars, a husband and wife found dead at home from multiple stab wounds. They too said they had received orders from Kazemi and Alikhani. Another man said he had assisted in the murder. Kazemi was reported telling the court on Saturday he had been the mastermind behind the killings, while Alikhani said the decision was taken "collectively."
The Iranian press reported that Emami was not only responsible for the deaths of Forouhar, Mokhtari, Pooyandeh, Sharif but also earlier killings in the 1980s and 1990s of
Saidi Sirjani, the Mykonos restaurant assassinations
Mykonos restaurant assassinations
In the Mykonos restaurant assassinations , Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan and their translator Nouri Dehkordi were assassinated at the Mykonos Greek restaurant in Berlin, Germany on 17 September 1992.In the Mykonos trial, the German court...
, the unsuccessful 1995 attempt to stage a bus accident in the mountains and kill 21 writers, and the unexpected death of Ahmad Khomeini
Ahmad Khomeini
Ahmad Khomeini , was the younger son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His wife is Fatemeh Soltani Tabatabai, daughter of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Bagher Soltani Tabatabai Borujerdi and niece of Imam Musa Sadr, the Shī‘ah religious leader of Libanon.Ahmad Khomeini was close to his father, the leader...
, (Ayatollah Khomeini's son). Human Rights activist Shirin Ebadi claims Emami's "friends reported that he belonged to a notorious gang of hard-core religious extremists who believed that the enemies of Islam should be killed."
Saeed Emami's arrest was not revealed, however, until June 3, 1999, six months after his reported suicide. Several facts added to skepticism over whether the true culprits of the murders had been found and justice done, namely: Emami was believed to have had "round-the-clock" surveillance while in prison, being the prime suspect of a serial political murder case that aroused the whole country; hair-removal cream available in Iran is unlikely to be lethal when ingested; that Emami's confession was not considered evidence and made public by the presiding judge who deemed it "unrelated to the case;" that
no photos of the agents of the Ministry of Intelligence tried in Dec 2000-Jan 2001 were published, their identity remained a "state secret". Most Iranians are convinced their "confessions" are part of a deal to allow them freedom after the trials, irrespective of the verdict.
and
There are conflicting reports on the manner of [Emami's] suicide. His body or its photograph have never been publicly seen and even in the 'Behesht Zahra' graveyard, where he is said to have been buried, no grave has been registered in his name.
According to Iranterror.com, "it was widely assumed that he was murdered in order to prevent the leak of sensitive information about MOIS operations, which would have compromised the entire leadership of the Islamic Republic."
Also noteworthy was the antagonism between the authorities and the victims' relatives. The lawyer for the victims relatives, Nasser Zarafshan, was arrested for "publicizing the case", for which her bail was set at the equivalent of $50,000 as opposed to $12,500 for some of the accused murderers. At least one of the victims' relatives, Sima Sahebi, the wife of Pouyandeh, was also arrested "for publishing a letter criticizing them for not allowing us to hold a memorial of the second anniversary of their death."
Investigations
Emadeddin Baghi
Emadeddin Baghi is a prominent Iranian human rights activist, prisoners' rights advocate, investigative journalist, philosopher and writer. He is the founder and head of the Committee for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights and the Society of Right to Life Guardians in Iran, and the author of twenty...
and Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist and writer. He has been described as "Iran’s preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly...
both wrote investigative news articles on the murders. In a series of articles in Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...
's Sobh Emrouz daily, Akbar Ganji referred to perpetrators with code names such as "Excellency Red Garmented" and their "Excellencies Gray" and the "Master Key".
In December 2000, Akbar Ganji announced the "Master Key" to the chain murders was former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian
Ali Fallahian
Hojatoleslam Ali Fallahian, is an Iranian politician and cleric. He has served as a member of the 3rd Assembly of Experts of the IRI and as the Minister of Intelligence of Islamic Republic of Iran in cabinet of President Hashemi Rafsanjani...
. He "also denounced by name some senior clerics, including Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi for having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders for the assassinations." A number of government officials including Mostafa Tajzadeh
Mostafa Tajzadeh
Seyyed Mostafa Tajzadeh is an Iranian progressive, reformist politician, and a member of Islamic Iran Participation Front .-Political career:...
, the political deputy of the Ministry of State emphatically rejected this view.
- "Among the prominent Islamic Republic figures accused by human rights advocates of masterminding the chain murders were Mostafa Pour Mohammadi and Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ezhei, now serving as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Interior and Intelligence ministers, respectively."
Retaliation against investigation
On March 12, 2000, Saeed HajjarianSaeed Hajjarian
Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...
was shot in the head by an assailant but narrowly missed death, ending up paralyzed for life. He is "believed to have played a key role in bringing about ... damaging disclosures" against the sponsors of the chain killings, not only as editor of Sobh Emrouz daily, but as a former deputy minister of intelligence turned reformist. Consequently, "some believe that remnants" of the chain murder "intelligence killer group may have been" behind his attempted assassination.
About the same time, Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist and writer. He has been described as "Iran’s preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly...
attended the 'Iran After the Elections' Conference
'Iran After the Elections' Conference
The "Iran After the Elections" Conference was a three-day social and cultural conference on reform in Iran organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and held in Berlin on April 7 and 8, 2000...
in Berlin. Upon return he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, to be followed by five years in exile (later reduced to six years imprisonment and no exile) for "retaining classified documents from the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry, insulting the former Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic system." His prison time was marked by hunger strike and dramatic courtroom display of torture marks.
Baghi was sentenced to three years in prison in 2000 and spent two years.
Explanation
The killings have been blamed on forces trying to put a stop to the Iranian reform movement and its effort to create "cultural and political openness."Shirin Ebadi speculates that the murders were done by a variety of means and surreptitiously to avoid any connection between them and to avoid the attention of the international community. Previous mass killings by the regime "had blackened the reputation" of the Islamic Republic and hindered Iran's efforts to provide jobs and resources for its growing population and "rebuild itself" after the Iran–Iraq War.
Adaptations in Media
The events surrounding one of the more infamous assassinations, the Mykonos restaurant assassinationsMykonos restaurant assassinations
In the Mykonos restaurant assassinations , Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan and their translator Nouri Dehkordi were assassinated at the Mykonos Greek restaurant in Berlin, Germany on 17 September 1992.In the Mykonos trial, the German court...
and subsequent trial were examined by Roya Hakakian
Roya Hakakian
Roya Hakakian is an Iranian-American poet, journalist and writer living in the United States. A lauded Persian poet turned television producer with programs like 60 Minutes, Roya became well known for her memoir, Journey from the Land of No in 2004. Her essays on Iranian issues appear in the New...
in her book Assassins of the Turquoise Palace.
November - December 1998
- Dariush ForouharDariush ForouharDariush Forouhar was a founder and leader of the Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran , a pan-Iranist opposition party in Iran and served as Minister of Labor in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979...
and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari - Mohammad Mokhtari (writer)
- Mohammad Jafar PouyandehMohammad Jafar PouyandehMohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, was an Iranian author and "one of the active translators of the country" who is most famous for being one of the victims of the Chain murders of Iran....
- Majid SharifMajid SharifMajid Sharif was an Iranian translator and journalist who was one of the victims of the Chain murders of Iran. He was a follower of the late Islamist modernist leftist theoretician Ali Shariati...
1988-1998
- Hussein Barazandeh - a 52 year old engineer in Mashhad who was one of the close aides of Dr. Ali ShariatiAli ShariatiAli Shariati was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist, who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century and has been called the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'.-Biography:Ali....
disappeared after leaving a Quran recitation session for his home. He was found dead the next day on January 3, 1995 far from his home. Initially, the reason for his death was said to be cardiac arrest, but later his family realized that the real reason was suffocation. - Pirouz DavaniPirouz DavaniPirouz Davani is, or was, an Iranian leftist activist last seen in "late August 1998 while leaving his residence in Tehran." He is thought to have been one of the victims of the "chain murders" of Iranian dissidents by "insiders" of the Islamic Republic system, though his body has not been found...
- an IranIranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian leftist activist last seen in "late August 1998 while leaving his residence in TehranTehranTehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
. - Mehdi DibajMehdi DibajMehdi Dibaj was an Iranian Christian convert from Sunni Islam, pastor and Christian martyr.Dibaj became a Christian as a young man and joined the Jama'at-e Rabbani Church, the Iranian branch of the Assemblies of God. After the 1979 Iranian revolution he encountered difficulties...
- was a Christian convert from Sunni Islam who had been tried and convicted of apostasy, but then released in June 1994. He was abducted shortly thereafter and his body found on July 5, 1994. - Hamid HajizadehHamid HajizadehHamid Hajizadeh was a contemporary Iranian poet. He was murdered along with his young son in September 1998 in Kerman, Iran, part of a series of killings of writers known as the "Chain murders"....
- a teacher and poet from Kerman, along with his 9-year-old son, were found stabbed to death in their beds on the rooftop of their home September 12, 1998. - Ahmad Mir Alaei - a writer, translator and thinker died in Isfahan under suspicious circumstances on October 24, 1995. He left home for an appointment at a quarter to 8 am. Police called his family to report the discover of a body at eleven o'clock p.m. Cardiac arrest was said to be the official reason for his death; a potassium injection is reportedly the actual reason.
- Kazem SamiKazem SamiDr. Kazem Sami Kermani was Iran's minister of health in the transitional government of Mehdi Bazargan and leader of the Iranian Nation Liberation Movement , an offshoot of Freedom Movement of Iran, a liberal religious-nationalist movement affiliated with National Front of Iran.-Political career:Dr...
- Iran's first Health Minister after the 1979 Islamic revolution, was stabbed to death November 1988 by an assailant posing as a patient at a clinic. No one was arrested. - Siamak Sanjari - killed on his wedding night, November 1996.
- Ali Akbar Saidi SirjaniAli Akbar Saidi SirjaniAli-Akbar Sa'idi Sirjani was an Iranian writer, poet and journalist who died in prison under mysterious circumstances after having been arrested for openly criticizing the government...
- Iranian writer, poet and journalist who was imprisoned in 1994 and died shortly after while in prison - Ahmad TafazzoliAhmad TafazzoliDr. Ahmad Tafazzoli was a prominent Persian Iranist and master of ancient Iranian literature and culture. Professor Tafazzoli was a faculty member of Tehran University....
- a prominent Persian Iranist and master of ancient Iranian literature and culture found dead in January 1997 - Ebrahim ZalzadehEbrahim ZalzadehEbrahim Zalzadeh was a dissident Iranian author and editor who was murdered in 1997 in what is thought to have been one of the "chain murders" of dissidents by "rogue elements" in Iran's intelligence ministry....
- editor of the monthly magazine Me'yar and the director of the publishing house Ebtekar, aged 49, went missing after leaving his office for home. His corpse was found on 29 March 1997 stabbed to death.
Survivors
- Masoud Behnoud
- Houshang GolshiriHoushang GolshiriHoushang Golshiri was an Iranian fiction writer, critic and editor. He was one of the first Iranian writers to use modern literary techniques, and is recognized as one of the most influential writers of Persian prose of the twentieth century.-Early life:...
- Mohamad Ali Sepanlou
- Faraj Sarkoohi
- Ahmad Shamlou
See also
- Human rights in Islamic Republic of IranHuman rights in Islamic Republic of IranThe state of human rights in Iran has been criticized both by Iranians and international human right activists, writers, and NGOs. The United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission have condemned prior and ongoing abuses in Iran in published critiques and several resolutions.The...
- History of fundamentalist Islam in IranHistory of fundamentalist Islam in IranThe history of fundamentalist Islam in Iran covers the history of Islamic revivalism and the rise of political Islam in modern Iran. Today, there are basically three types of Islam in Iran: traditionalism, modernism, and a variety of forms of revivalism usually brought together as fundamentalism...
- Hovyiat TV seriesHovyiat TV seriesHovyiat was a biweekly TV program on Iran's IRIB's Channel 1 in 1996. The program's objective was said to be "confrontation with western cultural invasion." The series targeted a broad range of Iranian intellectuals , archeologists, artists, scientists and national leaders as Mohammad Mosaddeq.It...
- Haqqani circle
- 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners
- Ruhollah HosseinianRuhollah HosseinianHojatoleslam Ruhollah Hosseinian is an Iranian Principalist politician.He served in the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security as deputy to Ali Fallahian and in April 2007 was appointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the security advisor to the president.He is a member of...
Further reading
- Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change By A. M. ANSARI (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs). 2000, 256 pp. ISBN 1862031177
External links
- The 1998 Serial Murders
- Closed Trial in Iran Raises Skepticism January 3, 2001
- GANJI IDENTIFIED FALLAHIAN AS THE "MASTER KEY" IN CHAIN MURDERS
- Iran: Pioneers Of Human Rights?
- Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2000
- Human Rights Watch Deplores Pattern of Harassment and Killing of Opposition Figures in Iran
- Iran Watch Canada - List of 79 dead or missing suspected victims of the Chain Murders
- Victims of serial killings by the information ministry (1988–1999)
- A Review of Serial Murders, Nahid Mousavi