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

Bahram Azadfar

About

Age: 33
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Non-Believer
Civil Status: Single

Case

Date of Killing: August 28, 1993
Location of Killing: Ankara Province, Altındağ, Ankara, Turkey
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 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 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 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 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 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 one’s interests.

UDHR, Article 20; ICCPR, Article 22.1.

  • 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.

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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Mr. Bahram Azadfar was patient, reserved, kind, and personable, and he loved volleyball.

News and information of the extrajudicial killing of Mr. Bahram Azadfar, also known as Bahram Ajam, was gathered from Abdorrahman Boroumand Center’s interview with Mr. Azadfar’s friend (August 10, 2021).  Additional information on this case was collected from an Abdorrahman Boroumand Center interview with one of Mr. Azadfar’s fellow party members (October 12, 2021), Website for Martyrs Connected to the Kurdish Democratic Party (no date), and an article published by Brigham Young University in the United States* (2013).

Mr. Azadfar was 40 years old.  He was single, Azari, and he was from Orumieh in West Azerbaijan Province.  He had a high school diploma (Abdorrahman Borouman interview, August 10, 2021). Mr. Azadfar served in the army, both before and after the revolution.  In the fall of 1983 he became a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.  A short while later he became responsible for "the task force"** of this Party, and he sustained injuries in several operations of this force.  He also served as an educator at the headquarters of this Party.  He taught literacy classes for the illiterate Peshmerga.  He also taught classes on politics and military science for the Peshmerga and for Party staff (October 12, 2021).

Mr. Azadfar was an influential person.  As a non-Kurdish Peshmerga in the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, he was successful in encouraging young people to join the Party and to struggle against the central government.  Since he spoke Turkish, he was engaged in Kurdistan Democratic Party political and organizational activities and operations in the border regions between Iraq, Iran, and Turkey (Boroumand Center Interview, August 10, 2021). 

Mr. Azadfar set up the Azerbaijan Branch of the Democratic Party in 1985.  In this endeavor, he was accompanied by several Turkish speaking Peshmerga from the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran.  They were aided and supported by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran.  Their goal was to carry out political activities in Turkish speaking areas of Iran.  However, their activities were not very successful, and this group was disbanded less than a year later.  At this time, he rejoined the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (Boroumand Center Interview, October 12, 2021).

Mr. Azadfar went to Turkey as a political refugee in the winter of 1992.  He intended to appeal to the Turkish government for help with the regrouping of the Azerbaijan Branch of the Democratic Party, so that they could carry out serious political activities in opposition to the government of Iran and in aid of the Turkish Peoples’ movement for ethnic rights (Boroumand Center Interview, October 12, 2021).

Mr. Azadfar wrote a letter to his fellow Party member in the spring of 1997 and described his political activities in Turkey.  He wrote, “Things are moving along very well.  I have been able to set up a series of meetings with Turkish officials.  Everything is going well.  I might be able to return soon and visit my friends in the Democratic Party.” (Boroumand Center Interview October 2021)

According to another friend, he was “sociable, kind, popular, and affable.  He liked to work with people and to help them.” (Boroumand Center Interview, August 10, 2021)

One of Mr. Azadfar’s fellow Party members said he was “democratic, freedom loving, virtuous, patient, and reserved.  He had leftist political ideas.  Mr. Azadfar liked to read, listen to the radio, drink tea, smoke cigarettes, and play volleyball.  He was very capable and knowledgeable in military matters.” (Boroumand Center Interview, October 12, 2021)

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) was founded in 1945 with the goal to gain autonomy for Kurdistan, in north-western Iran. After the Revolution, conflicts between the new central Shiite government and mainly Sunni Kurdistan regarding the role of minorities in the drafting of the constitution, specification of Shiite as the official state religion, and particularly the autonomy of the region, ended in armed clashes between the Revolutionary Guards and the peshmerga (the militia of the PDKI). The PDKI boycotted the referendum of April 1, 1979, when people went to polls to vote for or against the Islamic regime. On August 19, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini called the PDKI the “party of Satan” and declared it “unofficial and illegal.” Mass executions and fighting broke out and continued for several months in the region. By 1983, the PDKI had lost much of its influence in the region. In the years since various leaders of the PDKI have been assassinated. Following internal disputes, the party split in 2006 and two organizations were established as “The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan,” and “The Democratic Party of Kurdistan.”

Mr. Bahram Azadfar’s Death 

In the morning of August 28, 1997 (Article, 2013), Mr. Bahram Azadfar was killed with a gun in the Altindag area of Ankara, Turkey. (Boroumand Center Interview, October 12, 2021)

In an interview with Boroumand Center, Mr. Azadfar’s friend gave this account of the circumstances of his murder.  He said, “The night before the assassination, he accepted the insistent invitation of his old friend, and went to his home.  The following morning, two people knocked on the door.  Bahram’s friend opened the door and they quietly entered the courtyard.  Bahram’s friend went back inside and woke up Bahram.  He said, “Someone wants to see you at the door.”  Bahram went to the courtyard, still sleepy.  The two people shot him in the head and in the chest with guns equipped with silencers, and they murdered him. (Boroumand Center Interview, August 10, 1997)

According to Mr. Azadfar’s friend, the person who had insistently invited him to his home was very suspicious.  He asked a lot of questions and wanted to know about the details of the other political refugees, especially Mr. Azadfar.  (Boroumand Center Interview, August 10, 2021)

The homeowner, Mr. Azadfar’s friend, called the police station when he saw the body on the ground. (Boroumand Center Interview, August 10, 2021)

Iranian Officials’ Reaction

The is no information on the reaction of Iranian officials.

Turkish Officials’ Reaction

When Turkish police arrived at the scene of the assassination, they arrested Mr. Azadfar’s friends.  A few hours later, they arrested the two assassins.  Following the confessions of these two, Turkish police identified and pursued five of their cohorts, including two Turkish police officers, in connection with this murder. (Boroumand Center Interview, August 10, 2021)

Mr. Azadfar’s friend was arrested and interrogated after his assassination.  The National Intelligence Organization of Turkey, MIT, informed this friend that Mr. Azadfar’s assassins had a list of four political refugees in Turkey.  They were all members of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, and they were targeted for assassination. (Boroumand center Interview, August 10, 2021)

According to Mr. Azadfar’s friend, the police investigation ascertained that the friend at whose home the assassination took place had been in contact with the assassins.  He had cooperated with them by giving information about Mr. Azadfar.  After the murder of Mr. Azadfar, this person disappeared. (Boroumand Center Interview, August 10, 2021)

Familys’ Reaction

There is no information about the reaction of Mr. Azadfar’s family.

Impacts on Family

There is no information on the effect of the assassination of Mr. Azadfar on his family.

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* Champion, Brian and Crowther, Lee, "Appendix 3: An Interlinear Comparison of Six Chronologies Documenting Allegedly Iran-Sponsored Extraterritorial Attempted Killings, 1979-1996" (2013). Faculty Publications. 1572.
** “The task force” was a military force of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran present in all parts of Kurdistan to carry out operations, unlike other military forces of the party, that were each in charge of a special area in Kurdistan.

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