The latest plot to kidnap Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad has reopened the case of Iran’s concentrating on of opposition members and dissidents residing overseas.
Alinejad stated on Wednesday that she was shocked by an Iranian plot to kidnap her from her New York house, as Tehran stiffly denied the allegations contained in a US Justice Division indictment.
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The White Home strongly condemned the plot, which got here to mild late Tuesday when the Justice Division unveiled fees towards 4 Iranian intelligence brokers, who had allegedly deliberate to grab the dissident journalist and smuggle her to Iran.
Right here’s a timeline of Iran’s historical past of concentrating on and assassinating dissidents overseas:
December 7, 1979: Months after Ruhollah Khomeini based the Islamic Republic of Iran following a revolution, an murderer shot and killed the previous Shah’s nephew Shahriar Shafiq outdoors his house in Paris.
July 13, 1989: Iranian officers shot and killed the chief of the Kurdish Democratic Social gathering of Iran, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou. The Iranian Kurdish chief was killed by three bullets fired at very shut vary alongside along with his occasion comrade Abdullah Ghaderi Azar and Fadhil Rassoul, an Iraqi professor who was the mediator.
April 24, 1990: Kazem Rajavi, a distinguished Iranian tutorial and opposition determine, was shot useless in his automobile within the village of Coppet, close to Geneva, on April 24, 1990. Rajavi, was the spokesperson for the Mojahedin e-Khaleq (MEK) exiled group on the time earlier than becoming a member of the Nationwide Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). A Swiss choose in 2006 issued an arrest warrant for Ali Fallahian, Iran’s intelligence minister from 1989 to 1997, in connection to the assassination of Rajavi.
August 6, 1991: Iranian intelligence brokers assassinated former Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar at his house close to Paris. Bakhtiar was an opponent of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, however was promoted to be prime minister in a final determined try by the then Iranian chief to save lots of his monarchy. Bakhtiar’s liberal Westernism didn’t go down effectively and he resigned after simply 5 weeks in workplace. He fled the nation after the 1979 Iranian revolution and lived in exile in Paris till his homicide.
July 24, 1992: The UK Overseas Workplace in 1992 ordered three Iranians to depart the nation amid allegations they had been related in a plot to assassinate Indian-born British American novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie. Three years earlier in 1989, then-Supreme Chief Khomeini issued a fatwa, or spiritual edict, that referred to as on Muslims to the kill Rusdhie after his e-book “The Satanic Verses” was condemned as blasphemous.
August 8, 1992: Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a celebrated singer and artist residing in Germany was discovered crushed to demise in his house within the German metropolis of Bonn. Previous to his demise, Farrokhzad was concerned in producing an opposition radio program and was crucial of the Iranian Revolution and the regime.
September 17, 1992: “The Mykonos Restaurant Murders” grew to become the sight of the ugly assassination of three Iranian-Kurdish leaders allegedly carried out by Iranian brokers. In accordance with Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, officers of Iran lured members of Kurdistan Democratic Social gathering (KDP), below the pretext of negotiations who then fired indiscriminately, killing the dissidents.
February 20, 1996: Zahra Rajabi, a senior member of the MEK stationed in Turkey was shot to demise in her Istanbul house alongside considered one of her bodyguards.
December 15, 2015: Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, a member of the MEK, was assassinated through a shot within the head in entrance of his home in Almere, the Netherlands. Kolahi Samadi had entered the nation as a refugee below the false id of Ali Motamed. Iran had sentenced Samadi to demise in absentia for his connection to the 1981 bombing of the Islamic Republican Social gathering’s headquarters in Tehran, which killed dozens of Iranian officers.
November 8, 2017: Ahmad Mola Nissi, founding father of the Arab Battle Motion for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA) opposition group, was shot outdoors of his home in The Hague. Dutch intelligence accused Iran of hiring a intermediary to hold out the assassination and linked him to the killing and Kolahi Samadi in 2015.
June 30, 2018: A rally of the Paris-based Nationwide Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) attended by high-profile former US, European and Arab officers was the goal of a bomb plot. Belgian prosecutors charged Vienna-based Iranian diplomat Assadolah Assadi in October 2018 and three others with planning the assault.
October 14, 2019: France-based Iranian dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam was captured and brought to Iran after being lured to Iraq. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stated on the time they’d “trapped” Zam in a “complicated operation utilizing intelligence deception.” Iran executed Zam in December 2020.
November 14, 2019: Iranian dissident Masoud Molavi Vardanjani was shot useless whereas strolling on a road in Istanbul. Turkish officers formally accused two intelligence officers at Iran’s consulate in Turkey of instigating the killing.
August 2020: Iran stated it captured US-based opposition determine Jamshid Sharmahd. Particulars of his detention and subsequent journey to Iran, the place he’s presently held in jail, stay a thriller.
November 2020: Iranian media report the arrest of Sweden-based Iranian Arab opposition determine Habib Chaab, also called Habib Eseywed. Chaab, who comes from Iran’s Ahwazi Arab ethnic minority group, is believed to have been kidnapped by Iranian intelligence brokers in Turkey and brought to Iran from there.
