German Court: Tehran Ordered Exile

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.etext.org>
Subject: German Court: Tehran Ordered Exile Killings

German Court: Tehran Ordered Exile Killings

Verdict Blaming Top Iranians Ruptures Ties

By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 11 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post 

BERLIN, April 10 -- A German court found today that the highest 
levels of Iran's Islamic fundamentalist government gave orders 
to carry out the gangland-style slaying of three Kurdish dissidents 
and their translator here nearly five years ago.

The long-awaited verdict caused a rupture in relations between Iran and
Germany, its biggest trading partner in the West. The German government 
expelled four Iranian diplomats and recalled its ambassador from Tehran 
for consultation. Iran angrily denied that its leadership was behind the 
killings, recalled its own ambassador from Bonn and expelled four German 
diplomats in retaliation.

"The participation of Iranian state agencies, as found in the court verdict,
represents a flagrant violation of international law," the Foreign Ministry
in Bonn said in a statement.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the court ruling
"corroborates our long-held view that Iran's sponsorship of terrorism is
authorized at senior levels of the Iranian government." In Brussels, the
European  Union invited its 14 other members to emulate Germany in recalling 
their  ambassadors from Tehran.

In today's ruling, a three-judge tribunal sentenced an Iranian grocer and a
Lebanese accomplice to life in prison for their roles in gunning down the 
Kurdish exiles at the Mykonos restaurant here in 1992. Two other accessories to 
the crime were given jail terms of five to 11 years.

Presiding Judge Frithjof Kubsch said the four defendants harbored no
personal motives but were fulfilling an assassination decree issued by 
Tehran's  Committee for Special Operations. The court did not cite 
names but said the secret council consists of Iran's president, its top 
religious authority, the minister of intelligence and other senior 
security officials.

It was the first time that a Western court directly implicated Iran's top
leadership in the killing of Iranian dissidents who have sought refuge in
Europe. Iranian opposition figures say at least 20 people in European
countries have been killed by hit squads operating on Tehran's
instructions since the Islamic theocracy took power in 1979.

The United States has often exhorted its European allies to isolate Iran as
a pariah for its alleged role in sponsoring terrorism abroad. But Chancellor 
Helmut Kohl's government, which has pursued a policy of "critical dialogue"
with Iran, balked at taking any punitive steps that could jeopardize the
interests of German enterprises that do nearly $2 billion in annual trade
and hold $5 billion in debts 
from Tehran.

France and several of Germany's other European partners also argued in favor
of maintaining contacts with Iran, but the court's findings could seriously 
threaten those relations. EU governments are expected to discuss further 
punitive measures against Iran, including possible trade sanctions, in weeks 
to come.

Kubsch insisted the judges were not seeking to indict the Iranian
government. But he said that after months of sifting through evidence -- some 
of which they did not fully disclose -- they reached an inescapable conclusion 
that the slaying of the Kurdish exiles was part of a terror
campaign to eliminate political dissidents abroad and could only have been
orchestrated by Tehran.

"The Iranian political leadership is responsible," Kubsch declared. "It is
proven that there was an official liquidation order."

"This accusation is not true," Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Akbar Nateq
Nouri told reporters during a visit to Moscow, Reuter reported. "We have
asked the German leadership many times if there is any evidence and if so to 
present it to us. But until now they haven't. The trial had a political 
tinge," he added.

The German government warned its citizens today not to travel to Iran in the
next few days in view of possible security problems.

Last fall, when prosecutors first charged that Iran's paramount spiritual
leader, Ali Khamenei, and its president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were 
personally involved in ordering the killings, a wave of anti-German street 
protests erupted in Tehran.

Iranian officials were particularly incensed that the prosecution based its
case on testimony by turncoat exiles such as former president Abol Hassan 
Bani-Sadr and former security official Abolhassem Mesbahi. Both defectors drew 
on their intimate knowledge of the Iranian hierarchy to assert in court that 
assassinations could be approved only at the highest levels of the Tehran 
government.

The defectors' testimony was confirmed by information obtained by German
intelligence, the court said. The nature of this evidence was not disclosed.

Delivering the court opinion over six hours, Kubsch said the judges were
struck by boasts from Iran's leaders whenever they wanted "to silence an 
uncomfortable voice". He cited a television interview given by Iran's 
intelligence minister, Ali Fallahiyan, in August 1992 --  one month before 
the Mykonos killings -- in which he bragged about Iran's
ability to launch "decisive strikes" against its opponents abroad.

According to the court, Fallahiyan was delegated by the Committee for
Special Operations to execute the plan. He contacted Kazem Darabi, an Iranian 
grocer in Berlin known to German police as an Iranian agent and former 
Revolutionary Guard with close links to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia 
that receives arms and training from Iran.

Darabi recruited four Lebanese accomplices, according to the documents. They
targeted three leaders of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan -- an
important opponent of the Iranian regime -- attending a Socialist International
convention here.

The Kurds were tracked by Darabi and his group to the Mykonos restaurant,
where they were said to be plotting anti-Tehran strategy over dinner in a
back room. Two masked gunmen burst into the room and fired bullets into the
Kurdish victims at close range before speeding away in a blue BMW.

Police immediately focused their attention on Darabi, who had previously
come under suspicion for attacks on Iranian dissidents in which no one was
seriously injured or killed. He had been arrested previously but released
when police could not make the charges stick. Darabi and his accomplices
were arrested just weeks after the shooting. Police seized guns used in 
the murders that were identified as coming from Iranian army arsenals.

Darabi and his chief accomplice, Abbas Rhayel, were found guilty of murder
and sentenced to life in prison. Two other men, Youssef Amin and Mohamed Atris, 
were given jail terms of 11 years and 5 years 3 months. A fifth defendant,
Atallah Ayad, was acquitted.

German police issued an arrest warrant for Fallahiyan in March 1996, once
his role as the architect of the assassinations was established by German 
intelligence. Fallahiyan cultivated close ties with Bernd Schmidbauer, who is 
Kohl's adviser on intelligence matters, and was even received at the
chancellery on a visit in 1993 when he implored Schmidbauer to stop the Mykonos 
trial from taking place.

Investigators tried to file charges against Fallahiyan during the visit but
were told he was a "state guest". Since then, Schmidbauer has come under
criticism for touting the "critical dialogue" as the best way to prevent future 
terrorist attacks.

The Berlin court found that good relations between Bonn and Tehran did not
deter and may have even encouraged Iran to pursue its opponents on German soil.

As the verdict was read, hundreds of Iranian exiles who had gathered in and
around the courthouse cheered, clapped and danced. Massoud Rajavi, head of the 
National Council of Resistance of Iran, declared the German court had confirmed 
beyond any doubt that Iranian leaders were guilty of waging terror on
foreign soil.

"For years, there has hardly been any doubt about the role of the criminal
mullah regime's leadership in terrorist acts," Rajavi said in a statement. "Now 
a European court has for the first time named Khamenei and Rafsanjani as the 
masterminds of the attack in Berlin and Tehran's state terrorism."

(Source: www.washingtonpost.com)