Dr. Sirus Elahi is remembered as a stylish and optimistic person, but also as an inspiring man who left a long trail of people whose life he positively touched. 

Information regarding the extrajudicial execution of Mr. Sirius (also spelled "Cyrus") Elahi was obtained from several court transcripts 1, including Elahi v Islamic Republic of Iran, 124 F. Supp. 2d 97 (D.C.C.2000) (digital version published on Justia.com), Cyrus Elahi; Transcript of Proceedings, November 9, 2000 (digital version published on the website of Iran Human Rights Documentation Center); and a variety of press publications. 2 Additional information was obtained from excerpts of several reports including No Safe Haven: Iran's Global Assassination Campaign published by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre (digital version, Feb 3, 2011), Defying the Iranian Revolution (Manouchehr Ganji, 2002), Trends in Iranian External Assassination, Surveillance, and Abduction Plots, February 2022, Volume 15, Issue 2 (digital version); The Life and Times of the Shah (Gholam Reza Afkhami, 2009). Lastly, details were included from Iran dar hal-e Gozar video (Youtube, episode published in August 29, 2013), a televised interview of Ali Fallahian  (July 9, 2017); and reports from US death records, 83D Congress House of Representatives Report No 2140 dated July 28 1954, INSEE France (for the date of death of Yazdanseta).

Sirus Elahi was born in 1943 in Iran. His father was a cardiologist, his mother a midwife. He was the eldest of four children. The family moved to the United States in 1958. Dr. Elahi went to high school in Long Island, then attended the American University in Washington D.C. for his undergraduate degree and Ph.D, which he obtained in 1967. He taught in the same university until 1972, when he returned to Iran. 

Upon his  return, Dr.  Elahi became an assistant professor of political science in the then Melli University in Tehran (now Beheshti University). 3 He joined an unofficial think-tank 4 that analyzed Iran's economic, social, and political conditions and developments, and formulated recommendations addressed to the Queen. 5  In 1976, Dr. Elahi became a close advisor to then Minister of  Education, Dr. Manuchehr Ganji, who remained a close friend and confidante to Dr. Elahi until his assassination.

Following the revolution in 1979, Dr. Sirus Elahi was “condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal for having collaborated with the old regime. From that moment the Iranian authorities sought a way to eliminate him as discreetly as possible,” according to a testimonial from Abol Qasem Mesbahi, 6 which determined his decision to leave Iran and enter into exile.  Dr. Elahi and his wife settled in the United States where he took a position as an associate professor at Michigan State University. 

Dr. Elahi also engaged in political activism against the newly-established Islamic Republic. In the winter of 1979, Dr. Elahi, along with Dr. Ganji and two other colleagues, laid the foundation of the future Flag of Freedom Organization (Derafsh-e Kaviani in Persian), which he hoped would work towards liberating Iran and establishing a pluralistic society. 7 Later, in 1986, Dr. Elahi moved to Paris to dedicate his full time to operating the Flag of Freedom Organization (the "FFO").  He was responsible for the organization’s sensitive covert activities, including activating resistance cells and smuggling radio transmitters into Iran.  In 1989, Dr. Elahi became the organization’s second-in-command and traveled extensively to promote the organization's cause and organize clandestine activities. He was responsible for much of the group's propaganda in Iran, which was made through radio programs and written material infiltrated into the country in tracts and pamphlets or sent by fax. 8

Dr. Sirus Elahi is remembered as a stylish and optimistic person, but also as an inspiring man who left a long trail of people whose life he positively touched. His younger sister Elham, for whom Dr. Elahi was a father figure, wrote about him to the U.S. tribunal in 2000, "...As our parents were divorced when the children were young, Sirus being the oldest child, adopted many of the father's responsibilities to his siblings. He financially and emotionally supported us, supported each of us with college tuition, as college advisor, even though he was working as a student himself… [Sirus’s] political hopes for Iran was a country [of] tolerance and [respect] for everyone's rights in a pluralistic democracy... he would say people cannot expect to have better government and conditions until they can better themselves personally.” 

The Flag of Freedom Organization

The Flag of Freedom (the “FFO”) is described by its founders as a democratic opposition movement against the clerical regime in Iran, whose aims and purposes are the realization of the rights and freedoms of the Iranian people and the establishment of a pluralistic and parliamentary democracy in Iran. The FFO was a civil disobedience force to spearhead democratic opposition to the fundamentalist regime. It created a political defiance force at home and abroad. According to Dr. Manuchehr Ganji, founder and Secretary General of the FFO, the organization was funded by the United States of America, who at the time was seeking to free American hostages in Lebanon. Dr. Ganji affirms that logistics came from Egypt, France, Turkey and Scandinavian countries. 

The FFO had daily six-hour radio programs on short and medium wavelength broadcast from a station based in Egypt. It also smuggled FM and TV transmitters into Iran, as well as audio and video cassettes to disseminate news and information about events and the suppression of human rights throughout the country. In ten years, the FFO had had over 22,000 hours of radio transmission to Iran. FFO supporters inside Iran formed a network of small resistance cells of no more than five members each.

Under the presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997), when much attention and an array of resources were devoted to the elimination of the regime’s opponents, members of the FFO inside and outside Iran fell victim to political assassinations. Outside Iran, they included Dr. Sirus Elahi, Colonel Ata’ollah By Ahmadi, Abbas Qolizadeh, Dr. Reza Mazluman, Ayatollah Abdol Majid Va’ezi, Fereydun Farokhzad, and Hamid Amir Ansari. 

Background of Extrajudicial Killings by the Islamic Republic of Iran:

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.

Threats and Extrajudicial Execution of Mr. Sirus Elahi

Dr. Elahi was shot at close range and killed on the morning of October 23, 1990, in the entrance hall, on the ground floor of his building (u 8, rue Bourdelle à Paris). On that morning, he had failed to meet the colleague who customarily accompanied him to the FFO offices; he therefore left his apartment alone. The assailant/s was waiting for him. He was shot eight times, with four bullets puncturing his head. 14

Following the 1979 Revolution, Dr. Elahi’s name was published on a list of 200 individuals “deemed opponents and enemies of the new regime and calling for their arrest, was posted in the mosques throughout Iran. According to Dr. Ganji, in addition to the posting of this list, a Fatwa (religious edict) has been issued” calling for Dr. Elahi’s death. 

Dr. Elahi’s brother, Dariush, testified that his brother had received numerous threats and had talked with him and colleagues on several occasions about his fear for his safety,  and took steps to minimize risk, including getting training for self protection and self defense, and carrying a special briefcase with a lead lining to use as a shield. He did not live a normal life: he avoided going anywhere alone, being photographed, or sitting near a window in a restaurant or elsewhere, did not drive a car, and would not open the door for fear of being shot. In July 1990, Dr. Elahi asked his brother to buy funeral plots in a cemetery in the U.S.A. 

According to the Elahi family’s lawyer, in October 1990, the French authorities had received intelligence regarding an imminent threat against Dr. Ganji and other members of the FFO, including Dr. Elahi, that led them to conclude their lives were in imminent danger. However, Dr. Elahi was not granted police protection. The information regarding the threat came from an informer, a man named Ali Qorbanifar, 12 who worked with the French intelligence service. He was a drug user and dealer supplied by Mojtaba Mashhadi, with whom he had become friends. Mr. Mashhadi operated a chain of garages in Paris with other Iranians. 13

There were no eyewitnesses to the murder but the physical evidence collected from the scene and the nature of the injuries suffered by Dr. Elahi led the French police to conclude that he had struggled with the killer before succumbing to his injuries. Autopsy tests found flesh and pieces of cloth under Dr. Elahi's fingernails. One of the assailants had left the scene with blood on his jacket. The gun was left at the scene. Ballistic tests identified the murder weapon as a Romanian Walther PP 7.65mm automatic pistol with a silencer, a type which had been used in other assassinations of Iranian dissidents. 

Based on the available information, the identity of Dr. Elahi's assassin(s) has never been established, although French investigators were able to shed substantial light on the origins of the plot. 

The inquiry, and the testimonies of three individuals, implicated Mojtaba Mashhadi, a 42 year old who had been living in Paris since 1980, and Qolam Hossein Yazdanseta, who was in his early thirties. Both men were later convicted of conspiracy to murder Dr. Elahi. 15

According to the records of the French intelligence service, on November 7, 1989, a surveillance operation monitored by the French Security Service recorded a meeting between Ali Qorbanifar and Ali Ahani (Iranian Ambassador to France), Ali Angizi (the General Manager of the Iran Air Agency in France) and another person called Baqer (who was later introduced as the person in charge of Iran’s European intelligence operations) that took place at Orly Airport. In that meeting, Qorbanifar was asked to participate in a terrorist act against four opponents of the Iranian regime, of whom he only mentioned the name of Manuchehr Ganji. Another source provides the names of the other three individuals; Sirus Elahi, Shojaeddin Shafa, and Princess Ashraf Pahlavi. 16 Baqer designated Mashhadi as the person in charge of the operation against Manuchehr Ganji. At the beginning of December 1989, the French intelligence service learned that Mashhadi was working for the Iranian intelligence service. Towards the end of 1989, Qorbanifar was incarcerated for an unrelated drug trafficking offense. The French intelligence service monitored Mashhadi’s activities and contacts regularly thereafter and interviewed him regularly. On July 2, 1991, Mashhadi stated that he had been asked in November 1989, and again in January 1990, to conduct investigations regarding Sirus Elahi and three other persons. 

Mr. [Qolam] Hossein Yazdanseta, a drug user in his thirties and an acquaintance of  Mashhadi, confessed that in the summer of 1993, Mashhadi had confided in him, in secrecy, his part in the operation that led to the assassination of Sirus Elahi. Yazdanseta stated that Mashhadi had provided Qorbanifar with a weapon equipped with a silencer, but Qorbanifar subsequently withdrew from the plan, and returned the weapon. Yazdanseta added that the Iranian secret service took over and executed Elahi, but he couldn’t offer any further information.  

According to the lawyer of the Elahi family in Paris, Mr. Jacques Boedels, who testified in the U.S. Court, Mashhadi had importuned Yazdanseta to carry out the plot. He had offered Yazdanseta money to take photographs of Sirus Elahi and told him that he would be paid an additional sum if he would kill the person so identified. 17

Other witnesses, Farhad Qiasvand and Ali Reza Qanai-Miandoab, also testified that Mashhadi had told them that he was an agent of the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security ("MOIS") in France, and that he had traveled to Iran to meet with Minister Ali Fallahian, who had given him orders to assassinate dissidents. They also stated that Mashhadi had solicited them to assist in carrying out the assassination.18

Another witness, Abol Qasem Mesbahi, was the coordinator of the Iranian Intelligence services for Europe and the West (i.e. the assassination of the opponents of the regime in Europe) in the 1980s; he later became the third highest ranking member of VEVAK (the Islamic Republic’s secret police). In 1996, he fled Iran and defected to the West. As a defector, he became a key witness in the trials regarding many dissidents assassinated in Germany, Switzerland, and France. In response to the written questions of investigative judge Bruguiere, Mesbahi confirmed that the assassination of Dr. Elahi was organized and executed by Iranian government officials. He knew the killers’ identities and the sources of financing for the terrorist operations. Mesbahi also claimed that he had participated in the choice of Mashhadi to replace Vahid Gorji, who had been expelled from France in relation to a series of bombings in public places in Paris in 1985-1986. 19

French Officials’ Reaction 

Mashhadi and Yazdanseta were arrested on December 20, 1993, and charged with "association with a terrorist enterprise." At the time, Mashhadi was conducting surveillance on a French police interpreter, Mathieu G., who had acted as a translator for the case involving the assassination of Shapur Bakhtiar in 1991 in a suburb of Paris by agents sent by Tehran. Mashhadi had already obtained the interpreter’s photo and address. Mashhadi was also charged with complicity in the murder of Sirus Elahi. 

Yazdanseta and Mashhadi were tried before the Paris Criminal Court in September 1996, charged with having participated, during 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 in the commission of several crimes that were committed in connection with a terrorist organization, including conspiracy to commit a crime against Elahi and/or Ganji. On September 26, 1996, the Court convicted them of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts in relation to the police interpreter. For these actions, Mashhadi was sentenced to seven years in prison for "association with criminals in connection with a terrorist enterprise." and Yazdanseta to three years imprisonment. Convictions were upheld by the French Appellate and Supreme Court. 

According to Dr. Ganji and Mr. Boedels, the Elahi family’s lawyer in the Paris tribunal, Yazdanseta collaborated fully with the investigating judge (Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière) while in prison, providing critical information that implicated Mashhadi and Ali Fallahian (Iran's Minister of Information and Security) in the assassination of Sirus Elahi. He confessed that Mashhadi had asked him to carry out the assassination.  

Yazdanseta died in prison on September 26, 1998, at the age of 38, two days prior to his scheduled release. According to Dr. Ganji, Yazdanseta was assassinated in prison. The Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre reported that "Yazdanseta died in prison on September 26, 1998." 

Mashhadi was released under judicial supervision on September 29, 1999, three weeks before the official visit of the then-Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami. 

On February 11, 2000, Judge Bruguiere brought new charges against Mashhadi for "complicity in assassination in connection with an individual or collective undertaking with the aim of seriously disturbing the public order by intimidation." Mashhadi’s second trial on the murder charge was held on June 25-29, 2001. The trial was considerably undermined by the fact that Yazdanseta was no longer alive to testify. Other major witnesses including Ali Reza Qanai-Miandoab, Farhad Qiasvand, and Parrirokh Sekandari, who had previously testified before the investigating judge, were all absent. Witnesses were threatened by Iranian diplomats and representatives with violence if they testified against Mashhadi. The Iranian defector, Mesbahi, was also absent. He had agreed to testify in court if provided protection from Germany to the tribunal and back to Germany. On the day of the trial, he was accompanied to the French border by German security agents, but the French security agents supposed to ensure his safety while in France were not present at the border to accompany him to court. 20 

The presiding judge also found particular cause for the manner in which the French intelligence service had handled the case, demanding of a government witness: "with all the contacts and connections you had, how could you not prevent the killing?" The witness responded: "I can't answer all your questions. I'm an intelligence officer with heavy responsibilities. There are shadows I can't talk about." 

Mashhadi’s lawyers applied technical legal means to get him released. The defense cited arguments invoking the European Convention of Human Rights whereby those awaiting trial must be tried within a reasonable time frame. The deadline for the Paris court to do so had expired. The judiciary was in possession of information that was nearly 10 years old, and the detention order (though it was provisional) was dated 1993. 21

At the end of the hearing, the public prosecutor asked the court for a twenty-year jail sentence. Nonetheless, on June 29, 2001, the jury of five judges acquitted Mashhadi, citing the numerous unanswered questions raised during the trial. 

The court ruled that the assassination of Dr. Sirus Elahi had been planned and was an act of conspiracy but did not mention who was responsible for the decision or the execution of the murders. Thus, Mashhadi was released. Married to a French woman, Mashhadi continues to live and work in France. On the register of companies, he is the director of a company specializing in road haulage services, incorporated in 2010 in France. 22

Iranian Officials’ Reaction

In the aftermath of the assassination, there was absolute silence about the murder. However, over time, some newspapers referred to this murder. After the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar in France on August 6, 1991 (10 months later), the daily Jomhuri Eslami boasted about the determination of the perpetrators of the assassination of dissidents in Paris, naming Sirus Elahi among others, and described the inefficiency and the vulnerability of the French police and security services. 23 After the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris, “Baqer” told Mashhadi: “They could hit where and when they wanted.” 

In 2007, IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency), in an article written about the outcome of a US Court hearing against the Islamic Republic in an action taken by the family of the late Dr. Elahi, introduced Sirus Elahi as an anti-revolutionary who was assassinated in 1990. 24

Family’s Reaction

Dr. Elahi, a naturalized United States citizen, was survived by his parents and three younger siblings. His brother Dariush filed a lawsuit against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security. In the American legal system, the murderer/s of a U.S. citizen outside the United States can be punished by a U.S. court. 25 On December 20, 2000, the District Court for the District of Columbia, on the grounds of the same file meticulously compiled by the French investigating judge, found the defendants guilty and passed a $311 million judgment against the Islamic Republic of Iran for Dr. Elahi's assassination, $300 million of which was punitive damages. 

Impact on Family

Dr. Elahi’s younger sister, Elham, testified in writing for the US District Court: “Given all the strengths and all he did and how he loved us, you can only imagine what a wonderful brother and central hub to my family he was…my mother chose not to marry because she wished to devote herself to her children. She was destroyed by Cyrus' assassination… .” Affected by a severe heart condition, the news of her son’s assassination led to a second and fatal heart attack. Both parents died shortly after.

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1. Translations into English of documents, reports, minutes of interviews with witnesses and synthesis of declarations by key witnesses presented in Paris Tribunal in the original language, and later included in the U.S. Court bundles in 2000 as "Exhibits."

2. Kayhan (London), No 488 (January 6, 1993); No. 626, October 3, 1996; No 864 (5 July 2001); Le Monde (October 25, 1990), Libération (October 15, 1999), New York Times (October 24, 1990), 30 Years of Failure published on Fars News (February 08, 2009), Islamic Republic News Agency's (May 31, 2007), Radio Farda (June 26, 2001), Iran Press News Agency (article published in June 2001).

3. Elahi v Islamic Republic of Iran, 124F.Supp.2d 97 (D.D.C 2000), *103

4. The life and times of the Shah, by Gholam Reza Afkhami, 2009, University of California Press Ltd., Page 433

5. Iran Dar hale Gozar 08/29/13, In memory of Dr. Cyrus Elahi; Cyrus Elahi, Transcripts of the Proceedings”

6. Abolghassem Mesbahi is a former high-ranking official of the Iranian intelligence service in charge of special operations in Europe. He later defected to the West and was a key witness in the trials of the perpetrators of the assassination of dissident in Germany and France;  Mesbahi’s life was the subject of a documentary called "Witness C,  produced by Frank Garbély, Suisse - France 2011

7.  "Defying the Iranian Revolution", @2002 by Dr Manouchehr Ganji, page 54

8.  No Safe Haven: Iran's Global Assassination Campaign, published by Iran Human Rights Centre, February 3, 2011, Part 4.6, at 286-288

9.  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.

10. 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. 

11. 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”.

12. Qorbanifar is the brother of Manouchehr Qorbanifar, the arms dealer involved in the Iran-Contra Affair. https://www.radiofarda.com/a/1126593.html, 2001, June 26thCyrus Elahi, Transcript of Proceedings, November 9, 2000, testimony of Jacques Boedels, *130, *131 and *137

13.  Minutes of witness testimony dated April 11, 1995, Chamber of Mr. Bruguière

14.  Appellate Court of Paris Decision dated Feb 11, 2000

15.  These were Ali Qorbanifar, Hossein Yazdanseta and Farhad Qiasvand. Various Minutes of witness statements taken by the criminal division of the Police, District Court of Paris Chamber of the examining senior magistrate,  and the French intelligence services appended to the U.S. Court bundles as exhibits; Keyhan (London), No 488 (January 6, 1993).

16.  "La justice libère un agent iranien en préventive depuis six ans", La Libération, 1991 10 05

17.  Minutes of Witness Testimony dated January 21, 1994, District Court of Paris, Chamber of the Examining Magistrate

18.  Minutes on the information on the activities and declaration of Mashhadi, note 302, 91

19 .  Unpublished source, Abdorrahman Boroumand Center research.

20.  Abdorrahman Boroumand Center’s interview with Jacques Boedels, Elahi family’s lawyer. Paris, July-August, 2023

21.  Kayhan (London), No 864 (5 July 2001), page 3

22.  InfoGreff

23.  Jomuriyeh Eslami, September 18, 1991

24.  An American Court ordered the seizure of $8.2 million of Iran's assets, IRNA, 2007/05/31

25.  [2] Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986 , Exhibit 89,The Iran Brief December 4, 1995; [1] Elahi v Islamic Republic of Iran, 124 F.Supp.2d 97 (D.D.C 2000), *103, and Cyrus Elahi, Transcript of Proceedings, November 9, 2000, testimony of Dariush Elahi, *155