Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination
IHRDC Mission
Iran Human Rights Documentation
On September 17, 1992 agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) murdered three leading members of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and one of their supporters in a private dining room at the Mykonos Restaurant in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin, Germany. The attack was one of a series of assassinations sponsored by the Iranian government after the revolution of 1979 designed to intimidate and disrupt the activities of political opponents of the regime.
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Table of contents
1. Preface / 1
2. Executive summary / 2
3. Political context / 4
4. Planning and execution / 6
4.1. Ordering the assassination / 6
4.2. Prelude to murder / 8
4.3. The attack / 8
4.4. The getaway / 11
5. Arrests and trial / 12
5.1. Police investigation / 12
5.2. Indictment / 13
5.3. Trial / 13
5.4. Witness “c” / 14
5.5. Bfv report on the mykonos assassinations / 16
5.6. Arrest warrant issued for ali fallahian / 17
5.7. The judgment / 18
6. Conclusion / 19
Methodology / 21
Annex a: victims / 22
Annex b: perpetrators / 24
1. PREFACE
Since the success of the Islamic Revolution, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to exporting its revolution abroad. One aspect of this campaign has been a commitment to silencing critical voices in the Iranian exile community around the world. Since December 1979 Iranian intelligence agents have assassinated monarchist, nationalist and democratic activists in countries as diverse as the United States, Austria, Dubai, France and Turkey.
Iran is increasingly being held to account for its murderous activities outside its borders. In November 2006 an Argentinean federal judge issued an arrest warrant for eight IRI officials implicated in the bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires in July 1994 which killed 85 people. Those indicted include a former Iranian President Hojjatoleslam Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Iran’s former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati. Arrest warrants for Iranian officials have also been issued by Switzerland in April 2006 for the murder of Professor Kazem Rajavi and by Austria in 1989 for the murder of Kurdish leader Abdol-Rahman Ghassemlou. Iran’s former Intelligence Minister, Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian, who is featured on the cover of this report, is currently the subject of no less than three separate international arrest warrants.
In this context, the Mykonos case has particular significance because it opens a window on a secret world. The trial of many, but sadly not all, of those involved elicited minute operational details about Iran’s program of political assassinations and about the kind of men recruited to carry it out. The testimony of a high-ranking former Iranian intelligence officer with direct experience of such operations provided a rare insight into the political direction behind such attacks. The unprecedented release of German intelligence materials laid bare for public examination the infrastructure that supported Iranian Intelligence operations in Western Europe.
The IHRDC has sifted through all this material, and has conducted fresh interviews and additional research of its own, to produce the first comprehensive publicly available report on the Mykonos case to appear in either English or Farsi. In doing so, it provides human rights campaigners inside Iran, and in the wider human rights community outside, with the materials they need to demonstrate the violent resolve of the IRI to silence dissident voices no matter where in the world they are raised.
In bearing witness, the IHRDC report also pays tribute to the immense courage it takes to make a commitment to free speech and association in the face of such implacable hostility. The Mykonos Case is just one of many incidents in which Iranian political dissidents have paid the ultimate price for such acts of personal conscience.
2. Executive Summary
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IHRDC Mission
Murder at Mykonos:
Anatomy of a Political Assassination
Iran Human Rights Documentation
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
Murder at Mykonos:
Anatomy of a Political Assassination
IHRDC Mission
March 2007
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) is an independent and nonpartisan scholarly undertaking to establish a comprehensive and objective historical record of the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran since the 1979 revolution. This evolving historical record includes the collection and analysis of a broad range of documents and testimonies in an archive that is accessible to the public for research and educational purposes. Based on the principle that accounting for past abuses is essential for future social progress and democratic transformation, the IHRDC encourages an informed dialogue on the human rights situation in Iran. The IHRDC collaborates with a wide range of scholars and experts in human rights documentation and various other disciplines and projects.
IHRDC Mission
To investigate and document human rights abuses in Iran;
To raise international awareness of human rights violations in Iran and bring pressure to bear on the Iranian government to end these abuses;
To raise local awareness of human rights violations and international human rights standards inside Iran;
To establish an online archive of human rights documents that can one day be used to develop and support a reckoning process in Iran.
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
129 Church Street
New Haven, Connecticut 06510, USA
Tel: +1-(203)-772-2218
Fax: +1-(203)-772-1782
Email: info@iranhrdc.org
Web: http://www.iranhrdc.org
Photographs:
The main image on the front cover is a picture of the Mykonos Restaurant taken on April 28, 2004 (Photo: Picture Alliance). The picture of former Minister of Intelligence Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian which appears at the bottom right of the front cover can be found at www.iranian.com. The photographs of the victims on the back cover were provided by Parviz Dastmalchi.
© 2007 All Rights Reserved. Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
New Haven, Connecticut
