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

Sa'id Yazdanpanah

About

Age: 27
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam (Sunni)
Civil Status: Single

Case

Date of Killing: September 19, 1991
Location of Killing: Sulaymaniyah, 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. Yazdanpanah’s friends remember him as a person whose character attracted the attention of the people around him. “He was a kind human being; he had an extensive network of people, and he had the ability of solving social problems and issues in spite of his youth.”

Information regarding the killing of Mr. Sa’eed Yazdanpanah, son of Amineh Kake Mohammad Feizollah Beigi, was obtained from the “Part Azadi Kurdistan” website. Additional information was obtained from Rudaw website (2013-14) Part Azadiye Kurdistan (“Kurdistan Freedom Party”), PAK Declaration (Azadiye Bayan (“Freedom of Speech”) website’s Second Archives, September 22, 2011), the Party By-Laws, Part Azadi Kurdistan’s Representative Mission in Europe website (September 18, 2012), and the government weblog Diyar va Nadiar (October 10,2015).

Mr. Yazdanpanah was born on September 18, 1964, in Bucan County’s village of Saqqezlu in West Azarbaijan Province. He went to school in that same county, where he obtained his high school diploma. In high school, Mr. Yazdanpanah joined the Fadiyan Khalq Guerilla Organization. At the time of the issuance of Khomeini Decree* in August 1979, ordering the attack on Kurdistan, he and his brother Rashid Yazdanpanah (known as “Semko”, subsequently killed during the Kurdistan war) established a guerilla group called Semko within the framework of the Fadaiyan Khalq Guerilla Organization, through which they began fighting the central government. Mr. Yazdanpanah was Deputy First Person in Charge and was the person in charge of the Fadaiyan Khalq Guerilla Organization’s Kurdistan Committee for six months. He was a proponent of Kurdish nationalist thinking within the intra-organization disagreements, and believed that nationwide organizations “would not help to unify the Kurdish nation and Kurdish independence”. (Azadiye Bayan website’s Second Archives, September 22, 2011). Mr. Yazdanpanah left the Organization in the years after the Revolution and continued his activities within the framework of “the Fedaiyan Guerillas Followers of Identity”. (Rudaw TV website, 2013-14).

Ultimately, in 2012-13, Mr. Yazdanpanah established a Kurdish organization named Union of the Kurdistan People’s Revolutionaries in order to “bring together and join Kurdistan’s divided [territories and establish an independent country”. This Organization changed its name to Part Azadiye Kurdistan in its First Congress. ”(Azadiye Bayan website’s Second Archives, September 22, 2011).

Part Azadiye Kurdistan introduced him as “a knowledgeable fighter with great leadership and organizational abilities”. ” (Azadiye Bayan website’s Second Archives, September 22, 2011).

Mr. Yazdanpanah’s friends remember him as a person whose character attracted the attention of the people around him. “He was a kind human being; he had an extensive network of people, and he had the ability of solving social problems and issues in spite of his youth.” (Ali Ahmadi, Sa’eed Yazdanpanah Special Edition, Hayat-e Azadiye Kurdistan Party Party, PAK, undated). Another one of Mr. Yazdanpanah’s friends described him as “a caring and loyal friend, a disciplined human being from both a personal and an organizational standpoint,” who, at the same time, was “very sociable and a lover of literature and Kurdish music”. (Sa’eed Yazdanpanah Special Edition, Hayat-e Azadiye Kurdistan Party Party, PAK, undated).

Threats Made Against Mr. Yazdanpanah, and His Death

According to available information, Mr. Yazdanpanah was killed on September 19, 1991, in [the town of] Suleimanieh’s Zargateh neighborhood, located in Iraqi Kurdistan. According to his brother, Hossein Yazdanpanah, he left a friend’s home at approximately 7 PM and was driving in a car toward the end of the alleyway when he was shot by an attacker or attackers. (Hossein Yazdanpanah, Rudaw TV website, 2013-14). Hamnu Naqshbandi, a current member of the Part Azadiye Kurdistan’s leadership who was an 11-year-old child at the time, recounts his memory of his family hosting Mr. Yazdanpanah on the day of the incident: “Sa’eed was shot a few minutes after he left our home. We had gone to a store in our neighborhood with several other children to do some shopping when they said they were closed and that the storeowner’s son had left in a wagon. We had just arrived near a street vendor’s stand when someone came over and said that the situation was pretty chaotic. He said that a motorcyclist had just shot at a red [Toyota] Land Cruiser. We could see from afar that Kak Sa’eed’s head had fallen against the steering wheel.” (Hossein Yazdanpanah, Rudaw TV website, 2013-14).

According to Hossein Yazdanpanah, the attackers were “three terrorists with a motorcycle. They were somehow able to stop his car, and, unfortunately, put an end to that young fighter and Kurdish man of knowledge’s life with two bullets”. (Hossein Yazdanpanah, Rudaw TV website, 2013-14).

Mr. Yazdanpanah was 27 years old at the time of his death.

He was buried in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kurdistan Freedom Party

Part Azadiye Kurdistan (“Kurdistan Freedom Party”) is an opposition Kurdish party established in 2012-13. Part Azadiye Kurdistan is an independence-seeking party and wants to establish a Greater Kurdistan. The Party was established by Sa’eed Yazdanpanah and other Kurdish activists who, like him, had mainly been active in leftist organizations in Iran and had lost hope of attaining their ideals within the framework of these organizations and parties.

Officials’ Reaction

Several weblogs close to the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus have labeled Mr. Yazdanpanah’s murder in Iraq’s Suleimanieh “an assassination in the course of a suspicious incident”. (Diyar va Nadiyar, October 10, 2015).

The Party’s Reaction

Part Azadiye Kurdistan, that was established by Mr. Yazdanpanah, announced that 40 days after his murder, a military operation was carried out in the Saqqez region to avenge his death, in which a number of the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force members were killed. (Sa’eed Yazdanpanah Special Edition, Hayat-e Azadiye Kurdistan Party Party, PAK, undated).

On the twentieth anniversary of Mr. Yazdanpanah’s murder, Part Azadiye Kurdistan issued a declaration in which it wrote: “The murderous regime of the mullahs, which considered the rising of a nationalist fighting force with the aim of liberating Kurdistan from slavery to be the destruction of Iranian chauvinism and the expelling of its criminals from Kurdistan, tried to physically eliminate our young leader once our party declared its existence. The assassination of our Party’s leader in the south of Kurdistan was a prelude to the assassination of hundreds of fighters and supporters of Kurdish political parties and organizations settled in the south of Kurdistan.” (Azadiye Bayan website’s Second Archives, September 22, 2011).

The Party has named September 22, 2011, the “Part Azadiye Kurdistan Martyrs Day”. (Part Azadiye Kurdistan’s Representative Mission in Europe website September 18, 2012).

Family’s Reaction

There is no information regarding the family’s exact reaction. His brothers, Hossein and Semko Yazdanpanah, both of whom are political activists, have said, however, that in the course of the years following their brother’s murder, they have followed up his case through the Party and the Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region’s security apparatus, but that their efforts have born no fruit. (Hossein Yazdanpanah, Rudaw TV website, 2013-14).

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*Following the breakdown of negotiations between Kurdish parties and organizations with the central government delegation, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a decree in August 1979, ordering a military attack on Kurdistan. The text of said decree, broadcast on Iranian State Radio and television at the time, is as follows:
“In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
From all across Iran, various groups from the Armed Forces, the Revolutionary Guards, and the proud and zealous people of [this country] have asked me to issue an order for them to go to Paveh and put an end to the unrest. I thank them and warn the government, the Army, and the Gendarmerie that if they do not move toward [the region of] Paveh with tanks, artillery, and full military equipment in the next 24 hours, I will hold them all responsible. As Commander in Chief, I order the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Armed Forces to depart immediately toward Paveh with full military equipment and without awaiting further orders and without wasting time, and I order the government to immediately make preparations for the departure of the Guards. Until further notice, I consider law enforcement forces responsible for these violent killings, and I will act in revolutionary manner if they disobey this order. News repeatedly comes from the region that the government and the Armed Forces have done nothing. If positive action is not taken in the next 24 hours, I will hold the Chiefs of the Armed Forces and the Gendarmerie responsible. [That’s it]. Ruhollah Al-Mussavi Al-Khomeini”

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