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

Molla Ahmad Darvishi

About

Age: 60
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam (Sunni)
Civil Status: Married

Case

Date of Killing: September 10, 1993
Location of Killing: Soran (Diana), Iraq
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.

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 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, and 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 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.

  • The right not to be tried or punished again for an offence for which one has already been

convicted or acquitted.

ICCPR, Article 14.7.

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. Darvishi was a learned cleric.  He was a humanitarian, a lecturer, and a respected man.  He was knowledgeable about politics.  He was trusted, a good host, and a lover of freedom and democracy.

Information regarding the extrajudicial killing of Mr. Molla Ahmad Darvishi, son of Bakr (Abu Bakr) and Zari, was collected from an interview with an acquaintance of Mr. Darvishi (November 18, 2021), and from a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party who was a friend of Mr. Darvishi (December 1, 2021).  News of this killing was published in the RojiKurd Center Website (March 6, 2017) and ASOO Website (February 1, 2019).  Imam Khomeini Portal Website, Collected Works, Volume 6 (February 7, 1979 and February 26, 1979) was used for additional information.

Mr. Molla Ahmad Darvishi was born in 1933, into a poor farming family in the village of Margvar (Margavar), near Urumiyeh in Western Azerbaijan.  He was married, and he had 8 children.  Mr. Darvishi was Sunni.  He had religious training and was known as a religious mamoosta (teacher)*.  He was a leader of Friday Prayers in several villages in Kurdistan Province and he also taught religious classes (Boroumand Center Interview, November 18, 2021).  Mr. Darvishi joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran in the mid 1960s.  He would talk to people about Party Politics in many Kurdish towns and villages.  Locals would go to him to ask religious questions and to solve personal and collective problems (Center Interview, December 1, 2021).  Contrary to Party policy, Mr. Darvishi did not believe in armed activities.  He was of the opinion that “peaceful solutions” should be found to reconcile differences (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).

According to Mr. Darvishi’s acquaintance, after the February 1979 revolution, Mr. Darvishi and several other clerics from Kurdistan went to see Ayatollah Khomeini.  According to this acquaintance, Mr. Darvishi was not happy with the meeting.  He thought Khomeini was going to exacerbate religious conflicts, and that he was going to “cause bloodshed in Iran using religion” (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).  There is no reliable information on the details of this meeting.  The Imam Khomeini Portal Website alludes to two meetings between Khomeini and some people from Kurdistan in February 1979.  In a meeting with “a group of people from Kurdistan” on February 7, 1979, Khomeini stressed the need for “unity and fraternity between Shi’a and Sunni” (Collected Works of Khomeini, Volume 6, February 7, 1979).  On February 26, 1979, in another meeting “with clerics from Kurdistan present”, Khomeini stressed “national development” and the need for setting aside differences (Collected Works of Khomeini, Volume 6, February 26, 1979).

Mr. Darvishi did not believe Shi’a and Sunni had conflicts.  He believed “both Sunni and Shi’a worship God, and they both believe in Muhammad and in the Quran.  There is no need for them to have conflict.”  He also believed in the rights of minorities, such as the right to speak their mother tongues and the right to perpetuate their culture and to practice their traditions (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).

Around 1980, because of the bloody retributions against the Kurds in Kurdish areas, Mr. Darvishi left Iran.  He settled in the village of Delizian, near the town of Diana (Soran), in Iraq.  He was the leader of Prayer in a mosque in that area and he also continued to teach.  After a while, some of Mr. Darvishi’s family members, including his wife, joined him (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).  According to Mr. Darvishi’s acquaintance, Mr. Darvishi was summoned to the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Urumiyeh before he left Iran.  The judge at this court told him, “You have a role in the campaign of the Kurds against the Islamic Republic.  That’s why you {fear for your life}.”  According to this person, Mr. Darvishi replied to the judge, “I am not fearful because of my campaigns and my activities.  I am afraid of injustice.  I am afraid of being unjustly slandered and arrested.” (Center Interview, December 1, 2021)

According to people who knew him, Mr. Darvishi was a humanitarian, a lecturer, and a respected man.  He was knowledgeable about politics.  He was trusted, a good host, and a lover of freedom and democracy (Center Interview, November 18, 2021; Center Interview, December 1, 2021).

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI)

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan 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.”

Background of Extrajudicial Killings by the Islamic Republic of Iran

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 and have continued since then, both inside and outside Iran. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has so far identified over 540 killings outside Iran attributed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dissidents have been assassinated by the agents of the Islamic Republic outside Iran 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 most cases there has not been much published and the local authorities have not issued arrest warrants. But 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 or arrest of Iranian diplomats. In limited cases outside Iran, the perpetrators of these murders have been arrested and put on trial and the evidence presented, revealed the defendants’ connection to Iran’s government institutions, and an arrest warrant has been issued for Iran’s Minister of Information.

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. 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 and their sentence is death regardless of where they are.” 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”

At the same time, various political, judicial, and security officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran have, at different times and occasions, confirmed the existence of a long term government policy for these extrajudicial killings and in some cases their implementation. *

Threats Against Mr. Darvishi And His Death

According to available information, an hour and a half after sunset on September 10, 1993, seven people climbed the walls of Mr. Molla Ahmad Darvishi, located at kilometer 10, on the road from Delizian to Diana (Soran), and they gunned him down.  An acquaintance of Mr. Darvishi has said that he sustained 60 gunshots (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).  According to a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, the weapon used in this killing was a Kalashnikov (Center Interview, December 1, 2021).

According to available information, the seven assassins climbed the walls on three sides of the courtyard and gunned down Mr. Darvishi who was attending to his ablutions.  According to Mr. Darvishi’s acquaintance, his right hand was cut off from his body due to all the bullets.  His wife and two of his children were home at the time.  The neighbors immediately took Mr. Darvishi to Zargari (Azadi) Hospital in the town of Diana, but he died before they got there (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).

Mr. Darvishi had left his house before sunset, to go to the mosque across the street for prayers.  According to his acquaintance, when he noticed an armed person near the mosque, he decided not to go there and he returned home (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).

Mr. Darvishi and his family had been threatened many times.  A while after Mr. Darvishi had settled in Iraqi Kurdistanin the late 1970s, Iranian military and security forces attacked his home in Iranian Kurdistan.  One time they injured his wife with a rifle butt.  According to Mr. Darvishi’s acquaintance, some of his children had been told, “You will soon see your father dead.”  According to this person, security officers had told Mr. Darvishi to “forget his ideals and surrender to the Islamic republic.” (Center Interview, November 18, 2021)

Officials’ Reaction

There is no information regarding the reaction of officials to this killing.

Reaction of the Family

According to Mr. Darvishi’s acquaintance, his family left the legal pursuit of this killing to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (Center Interview, November 18, 2021).  A member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran said that “The Party has identified the killers of Mr. Darvishi.  However, the Party does not have the ability to {arrest and punish them}.” (Center Interview, December 1, 2021) 

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* Mamoosta in Kurdish means teacher and master.  This word is used for religious authorities, teachers and professors.
** Read more about the background of extrajudicial killings in the Islamic Republic of Iran by clicking on the left hand highlight with the same title.

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