Abdorrahman Boroumand Center

for Human Rights in Iran

https://www.iranrights.org
Omid, a memorial in defense of human rights in Iran
One Person’s Story

Abbas Nava'i Roshandel

About

Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam
Civil Status: Unknown

Case

Date of Killing: January 9, 1997
Location of Killing: Mashhad, Khorasan\Khorasan-e Razavi Province, Iran
Mode of Killing: Enforced disappearance
Charges: Unknown charge

About this Case

Mr. Nava’i was married and he had children.  He had a tire shop in Mashhad.

Information on the abduction and killing of Mr. Abbas Nava’i Roshandel was obtained from an interview conducted by Abdorrahman Boroumand Center with Mr. Iraj Mesdaqi, who is a Human Rights activist and a friend of Mr. Nava’i (August 26, 2022).  Information on this killing has also been published in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran website (December 26, 2016) and Pajhwok website (December 3, 2008 and August 30, 2009).  Additional information on this case has been gleaned from Deedgah website (research date: August 26, 2022), Eshterak website (August 17, 2019), and Shahrvand website (March 8, 2012). 

Mr. Nava’i was married and he had children.  He was a supporter of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran and he had spent part of the 1980s in prison.  He was released from prison in mid 1987 and he had to check in with the Information Office of Mashhad every month (Pajhwok website Dec 3, 2008; Eshterak website, August 17, 2019; Shahrvand website, March 8, 2012).  He had a tire store in Mashhad (Boroumand Center interview, August 26, 2022).

The Mojahedin Khalq Organization

The Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) was founded in 1965. This organization adapted the principles of Islam as its ideological guideline. However, its members’ interpretation of Islam was revolutionary, and they believed in armed struggle against the Shah’s regime. They valued Marxism as a progressive method for economic and social analysis but considered Islam as their source of inspiration, culture, and ideology. In the 1970s, the MKO was weakened when many of its members were imprisoned and executed. In 1975, following a deep ideological crisis, the organization refuted Islam as its ideology and, after a few of its members were killed and other Muslim members purged, the organization proclaimed Marxism as its ideology. This move led to a split of the Marxist-Leninist Section of the MKO in 1977. In January of 1979, the imprisoned Muslim leaders of the MKO were released, along with other political prisoners. They began to re-organize the MKO and to recruit new members, based on Islamic ideology. After the 1979 Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the MKO accepted the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini and supported the Revolution. Active participation in the political scene and infiltration of governmental institutions were foremost on the organization’s agenda.  During the first two years after the Revolution, the MKO succeeded in recruiting numerous sympathizers, especially in high schools and universities; but its efforts to gain political power, either by appointment or election, were strongly opposed by the Islamic Republic leaders. (1)

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 local authorities have not issued arrest warrants. But documentation, evidence, and traces obtained through investigations conducted by local police and judicial authorities confirm the theory of state committed crimes. In some instances, these investigations have resulted in the expulsion or arrest of Iranian diplomats. In a few cases outside Iran, the perpetrators of these murders have been arrested and put on trial. 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 that 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. 

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.

Disappearance and Death of Mr. Abbas Nava’i Roshandel 

Sometime between December 30, 1996 and January 19, 1997, during the month of Ramadan, when Mr. Abbas Nava’i Roshandel left the house before sunset to buy some tripe stew for breaking the Fast, he was abducted by Information Ministry agents in Mashhad (Boroumand Center interview, August 26, 2022; Pajhwok website, August 30, 2009; Eshterak website, August 17, 2019).

According to available information, Mr. Nava'i Roshandel was an MKO supporter who disappeared within the framework of a program within the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Information called Al-Ghadir, designed to kidnap and kill MKO members and supporters. There is no information regarding her and her fellow travelers who had fallen into the trap the Ministry of Information had set up for them to join the MKO in Iraq. Available investigations and research shows that Mr. Nava'i Roshandel and many others that were kidnapped under this program, never reached MKO’s camps in Iraq. A few months prior to Mr. Nava'i Roshandel’s kidnapping, thousands of prisoners, including members of the MKO, who were considered to be “maintaining their [ideological] stance”, had been executed in the course of the Summer of 1988 mass killings. (2) According to available information and the statements of Iranian officials, it is possible that Mr. Nava'i Roshandel and others who disappeared were killed on the basis of that same logic. (Boroumand Center research).

The Al-Ghadir Program: Kidnapping and Murder of the MKO by the Ministry of Information

Revolutionary forces and institutions started killing political opponents and minorities beginning in the first months of the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) members and supporters inside and outside Iran became a target and dozens of them were killed prior to the declaration of armed action by that Organization on June 20, 1981. (Boroumand Center research).

In their confessions given in the course of interrogations, most Serial Murders defendants alluded to the plan devised for the “kidnapping” and “elimination” of MKO members or supporters, called Al-Ghadir, the primary responsibility for which lied with the “Elteghat (literally meaning picking, choosing, and combining concepts that are not always in conformity with each other) General Division”. (Marze Porgohar Party (quoted in Pezhvak-e Iran, August 3, 2021). This Division – which was established in the Revolutionary Guards Corps prior to the declaration of armed action by the MKO and had subsequently been moved to the Ministry of Information – was one of the three divisions engaged in the analysis, pursuit, and clashes with groups opposed to the Islamic Republic, and charged with and responsible for dealing with Moslem groups such as the MKO, Forqan (8), and Arman-e Mostaz’afin (9). (Tasnim News Agency, June 24, 2019). According to a security official who spoke under an assumed name, the Elteghat Division functioned under the Ministry of Information’s Office of the Deputy for Security Affairs. “It also had the largest manpower, as there were between 150 to 200 employees of the Ministry’s Elteghat Division.” (Tasnim News Agency, June 24, 2019). Ali Ahmadi (Nazeri), who, according to Mehrdad Aalikhani, Head of the Ministry of Information’s New Left Office and one of the main defendants of the Serial Murders, was one of the “main people in the Al-Ghadir Program”, had confirmed in his confession that “these types of activities (i.e. the murder of opponents) have been taking place for years and security and intelligence systems do have and do resort to such methods … These types of activities were customary in the Ministry of Information, and they presented no issues in practice”. (Marze Porgohar Party (quoted in Pezhvak-e Iran, August 3, 2021).

According to Nasser Zarafshan, the attorney representing a number of the victims of the Serial Murders’ families, at least two different Deputyship offices of the Ministry of Information and three different General Divisions of said Ministry were involved in the killings. (Voice of America YouTube Channel, November 27, 2015). According to the confessions of Ministry of Information officials, the most important sections involved in the murder of MKO members and supporters were probably [the Ministry’s] Office of the Deputy for Security Affairs and the departments functioning under it, i.e. the Elteghat General Division and the Operations Division. (10)

According to a security official who spoke under an assumed name, the MKO started taking action in pulling out its forces from Iran around spring of 1982: “After we found out about this, we set up traps in the west of the country.” (Tasnim News Agency, June 24, 2019). According to another security official, Islamic Republic security agents had moles in the MKO starting as early as 1981: “The moles had infiltrated the Organization and had also been recruited by it.” (Tasnim News Agency, June 24, 2019). In an interview regarding the infiltration of information forces into opposition groups, Ali Fallahian, [then-President] Hashemi Rafsanjani’s Minister of Information, stated: “ … It wasn’t jinns and angels that provided us with information … In order to combat groups that engaged in the traffic of contraband; explosives; pornographic movies, pictures, and brochures; and in order to combat anti-revolutionaries and Monafeghin, we had no alternative but to infiltrate these groups …” (Kayhan, May 26, 2001). Although the mechanism for the kidnapping and murder of supporters and members of the MKO under the Al-Ghadir Program is not clear, it seems, however, that one of its most important objectives was to prevent MKO members and supporters from joining the Organization in Camp Ashraf in Iraq.

Available evidence also indicates that efforts were made by supporters and members of the MKO to leave the country through the Sistan and Baluchestan Province border. In a conversation with the Islamic Revolution Documents Center website, Bahram Noruzi, a commander in the Police Force, explained that he was stationed in the south of the country until around 1983, and said this about the MKO members and supporters’ exit route from Iran’s eastern border: “We received information that an exit route had begun from Zahedan, and an order [requiring us to edal with the issue]. Combatting narcotics traffic was also an issue that we were dealing with. They issued a two-month mission deployment for me in Sistan and Baluchestan Province. That two-month mission lasted six years.” (Islamic Revolution Documents Center website, July 14, 2020).

In spite of the fact that this former police official has spoken about the arrest of MKO members who intended to leave the country (Islamic Revolution Documents Center website, July 14, 2020) and several witnesses have also talked or written about the imprisonment of these individuals (the book Na Zistan, Na Marg (“Neither Living Nor Dying”)), the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center’s research has identified individuals that were kidnapped and murdered by Ministry of Information agents as they were attempting to leave the country in that same period. (Boroumand Center research).

According to Mehrdad Aalikhani’s confession, the Ministry of Information was in possession of a building near Behesht Zahra Cemetery, the rooms and open spaces of which were used to kill the victims. He talked in his account about how Ministry of Information operatives killed one of the victims in that building “in a very professional and controlled manner”, without leaving a trace. (Marze Porgohar Party (quoted in Pezhvak-e Iran, August 3, 2021). Abdorrahman Boroumand Center research indicates that a number MKO members and supporters and families of those executed, found [and would run into] each other at Behesht Zahra Cemetery. It is likely that Ministry of Information agents had established a constant presence at Behesht Zahra through this building, and that they used the Cemetery for the purpose of gathering information and secretly killing or burying members and supporters of the MKO if necessary. (Boroumand Center research).

The connection between, and the continuous nature of, the killings in the fall of 1998, in what came to be known as the Serial Murders, and the killing of people whose death aroused public indignation, brought to the fore [and in full] public view the issue of extrajudicial killings, even though these types of murders had long been a part of the Ministry of information’s annual plans and projects. The killing of members and supporters of the MKO was also one of these projects. It is not clear how many people were killed within the framework of the Al-Ghadir Program, and under the project of the “[physical] elimination” of members and supporters of the MKO. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has the names of more than 30 individuals who are suspected to have been kidnapped and killed in the course of that Program. (Pezhvak-e Iran, August 3, 2021; the book Na Zistan, Na Marg; Boroumand Center research).

Officials’ Reaction

There is no information regarding the officials’ statements concerning the killing of MKO members and supporters, including Ms. Mada’en.

However, Islamic Republic officials have stressed the necessity for violent action against and physical elimination of the members and supporters of the MKO on numerous occasions. In an interview given when he was the President of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Parliament), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani considered the MKO to be “a [nefarious and] invalid organization” and said: “It is actually better for an invalid political organization to be in danger and to perish; a righteous organization, however (what we believe in), is one that is based on Islamic tenets and jurisprudence, just like the substance and nature of the Islamic Revolution.” (Jomhuri Eslami newspaper, April 24, 1981). In his lecture given at the city of Tabriz Friday Prayer in September 1981, Ali Meshkini stated: “ … Shari’a Hadd (punishment) which is death, must be carried out against these people [the MKO], wherever it is that they rise up against the Islamic Rule, in the streets and in alleyways ...” (Jomhuri Eslami newspaper, September 27, 1981).

According to available evidence, in the course of the adjudication of the charges against the defendants in the Serial Murders cases, the case against persons involved in and persons who issued the orders to carry out the Al-Ghadir Program was never heard. However, Nasser Zarafshan, the attorney who, in addition to representing a number of the families of known victims of the Serial Murders, also represented several other persons who were thought to have been connected to these murders, was prosecuted, and subsequently arrested in the street in 2002, and taken to jail to serve a five-year prison sentence for disclosing government secrets. (ISNA, August 9, 2002; Radio Farda, March 16, 2007).

Family’s Reaction

Sometime after he had been abducted and killed, Mr. Nava’i’s daughter needed an operation, and his family applied to obtain his Death Certificate.  This was not given to them.  They appealed to different agencies, but they were not able to get this document (Pajhwok website, December 3, 2008).

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1) The exclusion of MKO members from government offices and the closure of their centers and publishing houses, in conjunction with to the Islamic Republic authorities’ different interpretation of Islam, widened the gap between the two. Authorities of the new regime referred to the Mojahedin as “Hypocrites” and the Hezbollahi supporters of the regime attacked the Mojahedin sympathizers regularly during demonstrations and while distributing publications, leading to the death of several MKO supporters. On June 20, 1981, the MKO called for a demonstration protesting their treatment by governmental officials and the government officials’ efforts to impeach their ally, President Abolhassan Banisadr. Despite the fact that the regime called this demonstration illegal, thousands came to the streets, some of whom confronted the Revolutionary Guardsmen and Hezbollahis. The number of casualties that resulted from this demonstration is unknown but a large number of demonstrators were arrested and executed in the following days and weeks. The day after the demonstration, the Islamic Republic regime started a repressive campaign – unprecedented in modern Iranian history. Thousands of MKO members and sympathizers were arrested or executed. On June 21, 1981, the MKO announced an armed struggle against the Islamic Republic and assassinated a number of high-ranking officials and supporters of the Islamic regime.
In the summer of 1981, the leader of the MKO and the impeached President (Banisadr) fled Iran to reside in France, where they founded the National Council of Resistance. After the MKO leaders and many of its members were expelled from France, they went to Iraq and founded the National Liberation Army of Iran in 1987, which entered Iranian territory a few times during the Iran-Iraq war. They were defeated in July 1988 during their last operation, the “Forugh Javidan” Operation. A few days after this operation, thousands of imprisoned Mojahedin supporters were killed during the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988. Ever since the summer of 1981, the MKO has continued its activities outside of Iran. No information is available regarding members and activities of the MKO inside the country. 
In spite of the “armed struggle” announcement by the MKO on June 20, 1981, many sympathizers of the organization had no military training, were not armed, and did not participate in armed conflict. 
3) 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 two individuals. 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 Iranian opponents of the regime. In connection with the latter case, German Judicial authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Ali Fallahian, the then-Minister of Information. The Berlin Criminal Court, in charge of hearing the case, 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 presented in said Court, 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.
4) 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”.
5) According to Mostafa Noruzi (Mohseni), one of the employees of the Operations Division of the Ministry of Information’s Office of the Deputy Minister for Security Affairs, “ … I must say that the task of physical elimination and other similar work, [such as] the arrest and transfer of the defendant, self-defense and physical training, constant surveillance, etc., had been set and assigned to us by the Ministry [of Information], and these tasks were part of our duties … And generally speaking, these types of work were done a lot in the Ministry [of Information], whether abroad or inside the country; and it was only in this particular case [the murder of Parvaneh Eskandari and Dariush Foruhar] that things turned out this way”. Ali Safa’ee (Mohammad Hosseini), an employee of the Operations Division of the Ministry of Information’s Office of the Deputy Minister for Security Affairs has stated: “It was around 1986 or 1987 that … I came to the Ministry [of Information’s] Operations [Division] and started working as a team member, and became an operations expert in operations for the arrest, kidnapping, and physical elimination of teams of Monafeqin (MKO), and [the identification and] destruction of the Monafeqin, anti-revolutionaries, and opponents of the regime collective houses.”

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