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

Shahriar Shafiq

About

Age: 34
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam (Shi'a)
Civil Status: Married

Case

Date of Killing: December 7, 1979
Location of Killing: Paris, France
Mode of Killing: Extrajudicial shooting

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 subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation.

UDHR, Article 12, ICCPR, Article 17.1.

    • 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 freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas.

UDHR, Article 19; ICCPR, Article 19.1 and ICCPR, Article 19.2.

    • The right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

UDHR, Article 20; ICCPR, Article 21.

    • The right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his or her interests.

UDHR, Article 20; ICCPR, Article 22.1.

    • The right, as a member of a religious or ethnic minority, to enjoy his or her own culture or to profess and practice his or her own religion.

UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 27.

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 know promptly and in detail the nature and cause of the charges against one.

UDHR, Article 9(2); ICCPR, Article 9.2 and Article 14.3.a

    • 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.

    • The right not to be compelled to testify against oneself or to confess to guilt.

ICCPR, Article 14.3.g.

    • The right not to be subjected to torture and to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

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

Trial rights

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

ICCPR, Article 14.1, 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.

    • 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

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Second son of the Shah’s twin, Mr. Shafiq served as a respected captain of the Imperial Navy, as well as head of Iran’s Karate and Judo Federation.  Last of the Pahlavis to leave Iran. 

Information on the assassination of Captain Shahriar Shafiq was drawn from the Memoirs of Ayatollah Khalkhali, the first religious judge appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini to preside over the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal. Further information was taken from the Kayhan newspaper dated 8 December 1979; a face book page assigned to Mr. Shafiq; the official website of Princess Ashraf Pahlavi; and the Qoqnus website. Mr. Shahriar Shafiq was a highly-ranked officer of the Imperial Iranian Navy.  He had fled Iran for Paris a week after the victory of the Islamic Revolution and nine months before his extra-judicial execution.

Mr. Shafiq was born in Cairo on 15 March 1945. He was the second child of Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, twin sister of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. His father, Ahmad Shafiq, was a son of the former minister of Egypt’s royal court and director of commercial aviation companies in Egypt. Shahriar Shafiq studied at Razi High School and continued his studies in the Britannia Royal Naval School (BRNS) at Dartmouth, in England. While studying at the Naval College, he was presented the Sword of Honor. He started his carrier at the Imperial Navy as a Lieutenant Commander of the Bayandor Destroyer in Khoramshahr. He was appointed as the Commander of the Imperial Iranian Navy’s destroyer fleet in 1975. In March 1978, he was also appointed as the head of the Judo and Karate Federation. He was married to Maryam Eqbal (daughter of Prime Minister Manuchehr Eqbal) and had two sons named Nader and Dara.

According to his mother, Mr. Shafiq was “a person of character, integrity and principle. He was generous, selfless and unswervingly patriotic. He was a soldier, willing to sacrifice greatly for his country and people. He would lay down his life for his motherland. (Princess Ashraf Pahlavi’s website)

Arrest and detention

Mr. Shafiq was never arrested.

Trial

Ayatollah Khalkhali emphasizes in his memoir that Mr. Shafiq was tried in absentia. There is no official evidence, however, that his case was examined in a public trial.

Charges

In a statement published in Kayhan on 08 December 1979, Ayatollah Khalkhali accused Mr. Shafiq of “intending to repeat the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, in order to break up the country into several provinces and to brutally kill millions of people.”  The name of Mr. Shahriar Shafiq was later mentioned in his memoirs, in a list of people executed by order of Mr. Khalkhali. According to Mr. Khalkhali, these people were all charged with "corruption on earth," which he defined in the following terms:  "A Corruptor on Earth is a person who contributes to spreading and expanding corruption on earth. Corruption is what leads to the decline, destruction, and deviation of society from its nature. People who were executed had strived in spreading corruption and prostitution; circulating heroin, opium, and licentious behavior; atheism; murder; betrayal; flattery; and, in sum, all these vile qualities. These people’s problems were aggravated by the fact that they did not repent, once they saw the people’s revolution."  

Evidence of guilt

Ayatollah Khalkhali does not provide any evidence against Mr. Shafiq, neither in his memoir nor in his statement published in Kayhan. 

Defense

Mr. Shafiq was denied the right to defend himself. He was not aware of being prosecuted by Iran's judicial authorities.

Judgment

While leaving his mother’s house at 1:00 in the afternoon of Friday, 07 December 1979, Mr. Shafiq was shot and killed by two bullets into the back of his neck and head in Villa Dupont street in Paris. The day after, Kayhan quoted the Agence France-Presse and wrote: “An eyewitness described the assassin as a young man between 25- and 30-years-old, who was wearing a biker’s jacket. He followed Mr. Shafiq for several steps, took the pistol close to the back of his neck, and shot him. He then got on his motor bike and left. The police found two shells from a 9mm pistol at the scene.” 

Kayhan, quoting Agence France-Presse, says that, several hours later, an unknown person took responsibility for the terror via a telephone call and said, “Shafiq had to be removed (or killed), keeping in line with our liberation activities. He was an enemy of our faith and our people.” He also added that, “He helped the international Zionists and we killed him. He concluded his talk with, “Long Live Khomeini!”

Kayhan published a statement by Ayatollah Khalkhali in the same report, as a leader of Fada’yan-e Eslam. Ayatollah Khalkhali announces in this statement that “Fada’yan-e Eslam’s warriors” executed Mr. Shafiq.

Three years after Mr. Shafiq’s death on 29 March 1982, the Ettela’at newspaper wrote on page 11, “Martyr Seyed Abdollah Borghe’i, one of the passionate young Hezbollahi people of Qom, who made tireless efforts to combat counter-revolutionary groups and to remove the "Liberals" from the political scene.  He was the one who executed Shahriar Shafiq, nephew of the Shah, in Paris, shot him twice and left without leaving a clue of his presence.”

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