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

Sheikh Ahmad Sayad

About

Age: 50
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam (Sunni)
Civil Status: Single

Case

Date of Killing: February 1, 1996
Location of Killing: 22 Bahman Square, Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran
Mode of Killing: Extrajudicial Execution

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 may 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 to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to change and manifest one’s 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, as a member of a religious or ethnic minority, to enjoy one’s own culture or to profess and practice one’s own religion.

 

UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 27.

  • The right to equality before the law and the right to equal protection of the law.

UDHR, Article 7; ICCPR, Article 26.

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.

  • 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.

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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Information about the extra-judicial killing of Sheikh Ahmad Sayad, also known as Molavi Ahmad Mirin, was collected from articles and video by the Baluch Campaign (2/14/16, 2/16/2016), a video broadcast by Kalameh TV (5/31/18), a report from the UN Commission on Human Rights (3/21/96), a BBC interview with an attendee of his funeral on February 3, 1996 published to YouTube on October 30, 2009, and a post on the weblog of the Dar Al-Sunnah Institute in Zarabad, of which Mr. Sayad was the founder and custodian. Background information was obtained from 1997 reports by Human Rights Watch, a 2016 article by the Middle East Institute, a 2017 article from Al-Monitor, and a 2018 report by Minority Rights Group International.

In 1946 in Ganjak, one of a few villages in Karvan, Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Dr. Sayad was born into a family of modest means. Economic hardship prompted his family to relocate throughout his childhood, to Sindh and then Karachi, Pakistan before moving back to Karvan. Dr. Sayad studied Hanafi jurisprudence under the guidance of his uncle, a Mullah, when he was a teenager (DAI).  Later when his father moved to Doha, Qatar to improve the family’s financial situation, Dr. Sayad – by this time a young man – went with him. Dr. Sayad was a Baluch and religious institutional leader within the Salafi branch of Sunni Islam.

Dr. Sayad headed a mosque there before receiving help from a mosque trustee and well-known Sheikh to pursue undergraduate studies in Madina, Saudi Arabia. He chose to study the Hadith, or the intricate collection and conservation of the prophet’s words and actions from different source accounts throughout history, and obtained master’s and doctoral degrees in Hadith sciences (DAI). His studies afforded him a network and knowledge base in the fields of ethics, Arabic language, and jurisprudence. While these credentials could have earned him prestigious positions outside Iran he preferred to return home in the Iranian year 1364 (March 21, 1985 → March 20, 1986) and established a mosque and a quranic school called the Dar Al-Sunnah Institute in Zarabad, a remote village in Baluchistan (DAI).

Those who knew Sayad spoke of a dignified man with a humble appearance who devoted his life to religious studies and to others. He took active part in his family’s household chores, did yard work at the mosque, unclogged pipes in the mosque bathroom, and refused to have items brought to him. He moved congregants both through his sermons and the down-to-earth way that he lived; even those with whom he had differences spoke highly of him, and people travelled from all over Iran just to meet with him.

First Arrest and Imprisonment

Dr. Sayad travelled to Saudi Arabia each year to raise funds for his mosque (BBC), and had been running it for two years when he was arrested in the Iranian year 1367 (3/21/88 → 3/20/89) (DAI). He spent five years confined to Evin prison, an ordeal that he said was transformative for him and emboldened his faith. Upon his release he went back to developing his institute in Zarabad, though loved ones implored him to leave Iran for his personal safety (DAI, BBC). One year and nine months after his release from prison, Dr. Sayad began getting summons to Zahedan, where he was interrogated multiple times (BBC). 

Background

Believed to make up one to three percent of the country’s population (ABC), Baluchi ethnic groups make up the majority of the population in Sistan-Baluchistan, where 64-77 percent of residents live below the poverty line. Despite having abundant gas, oil, gold, and marine resources, approximately two thirds of residents lack access to clean drinking water, and economic policies have allowed it to remain one of the poorest-sourced provinces in education, health, and food. Civil unrest in the region has given way to militant opposition groups and fatal skirmishes. In moving to bring the region under tighter control, the government has resorted to violence, including assassinations, as well as arbitrary arrests of peaceful human rights defenders. Ten Baluch civil rights activists were arbitrarily detained between March and September of 2017 alone (MRG).

Iran's Baluch minority are mostly Sunni Muslims, whereas the majority of Iran’s population are Shi'a Muslims. Policies and actions from authorities have been restrictive toward the practice of Sunni Islam, e.g. limiting and even blocking the construction of Sunni mosques in majority-Sh’ia areas (including Tehran), arbitrary closure of Sunni prayer halls and celebratory gatherings, and violence from security forces towards groups of Sunnis praying in public (MRG, HRW: Religious Minorities, AL). Lack of institutional support pushes Sunni leaders to pursue study in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, a trend which has historically aroused government suspicion due both to the hostility of Wahabism (the dominant branch of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia) towards Shiism, and to the political tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Baluch activists reported that government repression of Sunni Baluch groups had increased since February 1994, when locals gathered at Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan, to protest the destruction of a Sunni mosque in Mashhad. Government agents reportedly fired shots into the crowd and detained several activists (HRW: Ethnic Minorities). Dr. Sayad was one of four Sunni clerics of Baluch or Kurd descent to die in suspicious circumstances between 1994 and 1996 (UN, BC article 2/14/16).

Salafism

Salafism is a branch of Sunni Islam which aims to refine and promote Islam as it was practiced by its founding generatons (DAI). Sometimes controversial for its fundamentalist nature, Salafism, along with Wahhabism, has found itself the target of Iranian government campaigns to reduce its influence in schools and civic life (MEI). 

Arrest

On January 28, 1996, Dr. Sayad, age 50, was returning to Iran from Saudi Arabia where he was raising funds for his institute. A relative who had gone to meet him at the Bandar Abbas airport said that he was escorted away by two plainclothes agents, telling the relative that he would be back the next day. At 2pm that afternoon, Dr. Sayad called the parliamentary deputy of Iranshahr as well as notables of Chabahar, Sistan-Baluchistan, to reiterate that he would return the next day (BBC).

Death of Sheikh Ahmad Sayad

According to available sources, since the sighting at the airport and subsequent phone call to local leaders Dr. Sayad was neither seen nor heard from again (BBC). Five days later on February 1, his body was found in the Bandar Abbas suburb of Minab, near a square that serves as a transportation hub (BBC, BC text and video 2/16/16, DAI). The body bore signs of torture (HRW). As of the date of this report, no information is available on his manner of death.

Sources close to Dr. Sayad believe he was assassinated by Iranian authorities. They cite that he was last seen in the company of intelligence agents, and that locals had been questioned about his return date from Saudi Arabia. The sources also point to the multiple occasions that Dr. Sayad was summoned to Zahedan for questioning after his release from prison, and that no charges had ever been presented to warrant his imprisonment or interrogations.

State Response

The Special Representative of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights requested information on Dr. Sayad’s death from Iranian authorities in March of 1996 (UN). As of February 2016, the state had yet to pursue an inquiry into the circumstances of his death (BC 2/14/16). Sources close to Dr. Sayad reported that state representatives were present at his funeral. As of the date of this report, his death has yet to be reported by official news sources in Iran. 

Family Response

Surrounded by his children and his students, Sheikh Ahmad Sayad was laid to rest in Ganjak on February 3, 1996 (DAI, BC 2/16/16). 

On September 29, 2017, some of his followers created a channel on the messaging application Telegram to share religious media, commemorations of Dr. Sayad and his school, and information on fellow Baluch leaders who were killed.

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