Abdorrahman Boroumand Center

for Human Rights in Iran

https://www.iranrights.org
Memorial
Omid, a memorial in defense of human rights in Iran
One Person’s Story

Hitoshi Igarashi

About

Age: 44
Nationality: Japan
Religion: Unknown
Civil Status: Unknown

Case

Date of Killing: July 12, 1991
Location of Killing: University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
Mode of Killing: Stabbing
Charges: Religious offense

Human rights violations in this case

Extrajudicial killings

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a long history of politically motivated violence in Iran and around the world. Since the 1979 Revolution, Islamic Republic operatives inside and outside the country have engaged in kidnapping, disappearing, and killing a large number of individuals whose activities they deemed undesirable. The actual number of the victims of extrajudicial killings inside Iran is not clear; however, these murders began in February 1979, with the murder of Parviz Sayyah Sina, an Anglican Bishop, and have continued since then, both inside and outside Iran. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has so far identified over 500 extrajudicial killings outside Iran attributed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.(1)

Dissidents have been assassinated by the agents of the Islamic Republic outside Iran, where one of the first assassinations, that of a Navy Officer, Shahriar Shafiq, took place in Paris in December 1979. These assassinations have taken place in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Dubai, Iraq, and Turkey in the Middle East; Cyprus, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain in Europe; and the United States across the Atlantic Ocean. In too many cases, states have failed to guarantee the victims’ rights to the truth, justice, and remedy; states have revealed little about the assassinations and have not issued arrest warrants. Where there have been arrests and prosecutions, available information reveals a state policy of eliminating perceived enemies. 

Documentation, evidence, and traces obtained through investigations conducted by local police and judicial authorities confirm, however, the theory of state committed crimes. In certain cases, these investigations have resulted in the expulsion (The Netherlands, 2018) or arrest (Brussels, 2020; Turkey, 2021) of Iranian diplomats. In limited cases outside Iran, the perpetrators of these murders have been arrested and put on trial (Paris 1980 and 1991) and the evidence presented, revealed the defendants’ connection to Iran’s government institutions, and an arrest warrant (the Mikonos Trial in Germany) has been issued for Iran’s then-Minister of Information, Ali Fallahian and the Deputy Minister of Telecommunications, Hossein Sheikh Attar.

The manner in which these killings were organized and implemented in Iran and abroad, is indicative of a single pattern which, according to Roland Chatelin, the Swiss prosecutor, contains common parameters and detailed planning. It can be ascertained from the similarities between these murders in different countries that the Iranian government is the principal entity who ordered the implementation of these crimes. (2). In 1997, the Berlin Criminal Court, in charge of hearing the case of the shooting of Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant, officially announced that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s highest-ranking officials had issued the order to carry out the killings. According to the indictment, the decision to commit the murders was made in a committee called the “Special Operations Committee” composed of the President, the Minister of Information and Security (VAVAK), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, representatives of the various security organs and other organizations, and finally, the Leader of the Revolution. 

Iranian authorities have not officially accepted responsibility for these murders and have even attributed their commission to internal strife in opposition groups. Nevertheless, since the very inception of the Islamic Republic regime, the Islamic Republic officials have justified these crimes from an ideological and legal standpoint. In the spring of 1979, Sadeq Khalkhali, the first Chief Shari’a Judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts, officially announced the regime’s decision to implement extrajudicial executions, and justified the decision: “ … These people have been sentenced to death; from the Iranian people’s perspective, if someone wants to assassinate these individuals abroad, in any country, no government has any right to bring the perpetrator to trial as a terrorist, because such a person is the implementing agent of the sentence issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Therefore, they are Mahduroddam (“one whose blood may be spilled, whose life can be taken, without the perpetrator incurring any punishment”) and their sentence is death regardless of where they are [and where you find them].” 

More than 10 years after these proclamations, in a speech about the security forces’ success, Ali Fallahian, the regime’s Minister of Information stated the following regarding the elimination of members of the opposition: “ … We have had success in inflicting damage to many of these little groups outside the country and on our borders” (Speech broadcast on the state-run Iranian Radio and Television on August 31, 1992, quoted from Asr Iran, August 17, 2006).

Extrajudicial killings have rarely been pursued legally in Iran. The few murders that were followed up on in 1998 , which came to be known as “the Serial (Chain) Murders(3),” have brought to light the involvement and responsibility of the country’s Information officials. Several Ministry of Information agents who were defendants in the Serial Murders case, confirmed the existence of a long term government policy of extrajudicial killings and emphasized that there was planning on an annual basis to carry out these executions, for which a religious decree was issued. There was a budget allocated and there were objectives set, and those who participated in the murders were commended. In a lecture given at [the city of] Hamedan’s Bu Ali University in 1996, Sa’eed Emami, Ministry of Information Deputy Minister for Security Affairs and one of the principal defendants in the Serial Murders case – who was later said by Iranian officials to have committed suicide while in detention – had stressed that the activities of Iran’s security forces were not confined to the country’s borders: “ … We have set the security perimeter within the confines of our borders. [However,] if we see threats infiltrating inside the country from abroad, we will enlarge the perimeter.”

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1) Among the first known murders that occurred a week after the February 1979 Revolution was that of Mr. Parviz (Arastu) Sayyah Sina, the bishop of a church in the city of Shiraz. The assassination of Mr. Shahriar Shafiq, an Imperial Navy officer, in December 1979 in Paris is among the first murders committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran outside the country. ​​These killings continued in the following years inside and outside the country and in various forms.
2) Investigations into the murder of well-known personalities in France, Germany and Switzerland have yielded evidence and documentation showing that the officials and employees of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran acted as accomplices and principals [in the killings]. In France, the Islamic Republic’s Deputy Minister of Post and Telegraph was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for the murder of former Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar and his assistant, Sorush Katibeh. In Germany (Berlin), the Islamic Republic’s security agents and agents of the Lebanese Hezbollah were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of four Kurdish opposition leaders. In connection with the latter case, German Judicial authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Ali Fallahian, the then-Minister of Information. 
3) A few days before Mr. Mokhtari’s murder, Dariush Foruhar and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari, leaders of the People of Iran Party, had been killed in a most heinous manner in their own home. After Mr. Mokhtari’s body was found, the body of Mohammad Ja’far Puyandeh, another well-known literary figure, was discovered in a village near the city of Karaj. These four individuals’ cases was named the “Serial Murders”.
Human rights violations

Based on the available information, the following human rights have been violated in this case:

    • The right to liberty and security of the person. The right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 9.1.

    • The right not to be punished for any crime on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence, under national or international law, at the time it was committed.

UDHR, Article 11.2; ICCPR, Article 15, Article 6.2.

    • The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to change and manifest his or her religion or belief.

UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 18.1, ICCPR, Article 18.2; Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, Article 1 and Article 6.

In its general comment 22 (48) of 20 July 1993, the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee observed that the freedom to "have or to adopt" a religion or belief necessarily entailed the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views, as well as the right to retain one's religion or belief. Article 18, paragraph 2, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights bars coercion that would impair the right to have or adopt a religion or belief, including the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers to adhere to religious beliefs and congregations, to recant their religion or belief or to convert.

The right to due process

    • The right to be presumed innocent until found guilty by a competent and impartial tribunal in accordance with law.

ICCPR, Article 14.1 and Article 14.2.

Pre-trial detention rights

    • The right to counsel of one’s own choosing or the right to legal aid. The right to communicate with one’s own attorney in confidence

ICCPR, Article 14.3.b and Article 14.3.d; Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, Article 1, Article 2, Article 5, Article 6, Article 8.

    • The right to adequate time and facilities for the preparation of the defense case.

ICCPR, Article 14.3.b.

Trial rights

    • The right to a fair and public trial without undue delay.

ICCPR, Article 14.1,

ICCPR, Article 14.3.c.

  • The right to defense through an attorney or legal aid. The right to examine, or have examined, the witnesses against one, and the right to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on one’s behalf under the same conditions as prosecution witnesses.

ICCPR, Article 14.3.d and Article 14.3.e%viol_iccpr_14.3.e%.

  • The right to have the decision rendered in public.

ICCPR, Article 14.1.

Judgment rights

    • The right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction.

ICCPR, Article 14.5.

    • The right to seek pardon or commutation of sentence.

ICCPR, Article 6.4.

Capital punishment

    • The inherent right to life, of which no one shall be arbitrarily deprived.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 6.1; Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, Article 1.1, Article 1.2.

    • The right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

ICCPR, Article 7; Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Article 1 and Article 2.

About this Case

Correct/ Complete This Entry

Mr. Hitoshi Igarashi is one of hundreds of individuals who have been extrajudicially executed outside of Iran since the 1979 revolution. In many cases, these killings were carried out by agents of the Islamic Republic or can reasonably be assumed to be the result of Iranian government policy. Information about Mr. Hitoshi Igarashi's case was drawn from the Iranian newspaper Jomhuri Eslami (March 4, 16, and July 17, 1991), the New York Times (July 13, 1991), a talk by Professor Shigemi Inaga at the International Conference on the Dialogue of Civilizations at the United Nations University (July 31-August 3, 2001), and Amnesty International report (May 1, 1997) .

Mr. Igarashi, a respected Islamic scholar in Japan, was the translator of The Canon of Medicine by Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and the controversial novel, Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie. This novel was the object of a 1989 fatwa (religious edict) by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in which he had condemned to death the author of the Satanic Verses and those involved in its publication and dissemination.

Mr. Igarashi's murder was linked to his translation of Rushdie’s novel. After the demise of Ayatollah Khomeini, his successors reconfirmed the fatwa. On February 15, 1991, Ayatollah Sane'i, the head of a state sponsored foundation called Bonyad-e Panzdah-e Khordad (created by the Iranian Government on June 15, 1979) appeared on Iranian TV and offered $3 million to any Iranian and a $1 million to any foreigner who killed Rushdie; he raised the prize money to $2 million on March 4, 1991. On March 15, 1991, the same foundation announced that in order to implement Khomeini's death fatwa, it would compensate, support, and protect those who volunteer to kill individuals involved in the publication and dissemination of the Satanic Verses (Jomhuri Eslami, March 16, 1991).

Mr. Igarashi is not the sole victim of the fatwa; the Islamic Republic’s authorities targeted other individuals involved in the translation or publication of the Satanic Verses. On July 3, 1991, the Italian translator of the novel, Ettore Caprioli, was attacked in Milan and stabbed; he survived the assassination attempt. The Italian police investigating Mr. Caprioli's case announced that the assailant had connections with the Islamic Republic's Embassy. On October 11, 1993, William Nygaard, Salman Rushdie's Norwegian publisher, became the victim of an assassination attempt and survived against heavy odds. The Norwegian government reacted to this attack by recalling its ambassador to Iran.

Arrest and detention

Mr. Hitoshi Igarashi was never arrested.

Trial

Mr. Igarashi was not summoned before a court, and no public trial was held in his case. It is not known whether he was tried in abstentia in Iran.

Charges

No specific charges were brought against Mr. Igarashi. However in his 1989 fatwa, Ayatollah Khomeini charged all the people involved in the publication and dissemination of the Satanic Verses with "insulting the sacred beliefs of Muslims."

Evidence of guilt

The Japanese version of the Satanic Verses.

Defense

Mr. Igarashi was not given the opportunity to defend himself before being killed. However, since there was an international debate on the fatwa, he had explained his decision to translate the Satanic Verses. According to Shigemi Inaga (August 1-2, 2001, Kyoto): ".... Igarashi also defended the novel and novelist by locating the writer in the lineage of the Islamic mystical Sufi thought. According to Igarashi, Rushdie was not anti-Islamic, but his passage to England, just like Passage to India by E. M. Foster, represented a literature of exile and could be judiciously compared to the Hejra by Muhammad, to begin with, or to the "Western Exile" in Kairouan by Suhrawardi. By interpreting the Verses as a modern version of Rumi's "Song of a Reed," lamenting the separation from (the) God/Creator, Igarashi identified Rushdie among the mystical and heretic poets of Islamic rage against religious profanation. Igarashi, as a Japanese man, wished to make an intervention as a third party through his Japanese translation, so as to put an end to this endless conflict."

Judgment

On February 14, 1989, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a death fatwa against the author, the editors and publishers of the Satanic Verses in the following terms: "We are from God and to God we shall return" (Koranic verse). I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Koran, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, God Willing..." (Ruhollah al-Musavi al-Khomeini). On March 5, 1991, a resolution issued by Iranian officials stating that Khomeini's fatwa shall not be void after his death and should be implemented by all means. On July 12, 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi was found stabbed to death on the campus of Tsukuba University, about 40 miles northeast of Tokyo. The police reported that a janitor had found Mr. Igarashi's body near an elevator on the seventh floor of the building with slash wounds on his neck, face, and hands.

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