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COURT TOLD IRANIAN AGENTS KILLED DR. REZA MAZLOOMAN
PARIS 20 June (IPS) A criminal court in Paris was told Tuesday that Mr. Ahmad Jayhooni, 65, accused of "complicity" in the assassinated Dr. Reza Mazlooman, a staunch opponent of the Islamic republic on 28 May 1996, is in fact an agent of the Iranian secret services having a hand in the elimination of other Iranian dissidents outside Iran. The 60 years-old Mazlooman, alias Koorosh Ariamanesh, was found dead in his tiny apartment in Creteil, a populous suburb of Paris, shot three times at close range. On request from Mr. Jean Louis Bruguiere, an internationally known investigative judge, German police arrested Mr. Jayhooni at his residence in Bad Godesberg, a posh residential area of the former German capital two days after the murder, being one of the last persons who had visited the victim. A former university professor and Deputy Education Minister under Dr. Manoochehr Ganji, whom he had joined in Paris to create the US funded "Derafsh Kavian" organisation, Mr. Mazlooman had reached France in the eighties and started immediately his activities against the new theocratic regime by publishing the "Payam Ma Azadegan" (The Message of Us, Freedom Lovers), a virulently anti-Islamic weekly. According to investigators and well-informed Iranian sources, Mr. Jayhooni, who is married with three children, had established close friendly and personal relationship with Mr. Mazlooman, offering to distribute his weekly in Germany. A businessman first in Tehran and then in the Persian Gulf Sheikhdom of Kuwait, Mr. Jayhooni had come to Germany and bought a video shop in Bad Godesberg, named after his own name. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a well-informed source told Iran Press Service that the shop was in fact serving as a front for the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, adding that Mr. Jayhooni used to have close, but secret contacts with the Iranian Embassy in Bonn. They said the Ministry had hired Mr. Jayhooni during a secret trip he made to Iran. Using his contacts with Tehran, he would help political dissidents escape Iran and obtain asylum in German against money, but also winning their confidence. This had been confirmed by anti-terrorist Judge Bruguiere who, whoever, has admitted that he could not establish that Mr. Jayhooni was the killer, as a radar camera for excess speed had spotted him during the night of the crime. The method used in the murder of Mr. Aryamanesh was the "familiar pattern" of the "Trojan Horse", meaning to befriend the designated victims and infiltrate their organisations. It was with this method that the Iranian secret services had assassinated several influential opponents, including Dr. Abdolrahman Qasemloo, the leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK) in Vienna, in July 1989; Dr. Shapoor Bakhtiar, the Shah’s last Prime Minister, in his residence near Paris in August 1991, Dr. Abdolrahman Broomand, Mr. Bakhtiar’s deputy, in his apartment in Paris and Dr. Qasem Sharafkandi, who had replaced Dr. Qasemloo at the head of DPIK and three of his friends in Berlin on September 1992. Alongside the "Derafsh Kavian" and some other groups, the French Association "SOS-Attentats" but more remarkably the Paris-based "Reporter Sans Frontieres" (Reporters Without Borders) have registered plaintiffs. "One has murdered cowardly an Iranian journalist in a foreign land five years ago. Therefore, it is natural for our organisation to register as a plaintiff in the trial of the killer’s alledged associate", the RSF said in a communiqué released Monday in Paris, explaining that the aim of the action was "the identification and punishment" of those who ordered the assassination, as, in the past, the French Justice had not been spared from diplomatic pressures in terrorist affairs related to Iran". This is the first time that RSF has decided to move from "protest" (to authorities that repress freedom of the press) and assisting (the victims) to the stage of "intervening in justice", explained Mr. Robert Menard, the organisation’s General Secretary. "What justifies this new approach is the impunity of the murderers", he said, observing that "out of the 750 journalists who had been assassinated in the world in the past fifteen years, 95 per cent of the cases, of the assassinations, have not been concluded, the killers remaining unpunished, with some cases where the murderers not even being sought". The trial had started Monday with a delay of more than 3 hours due to the fact that the accused had been wounded seriously during a scuffle that had broke out ten days before in the Fresnes prison where Mr. Jayhooni is held, when a prisoner had tried to escape with helicopter. Defence lawyer Pierre Gonzales de Gaspard rejected the charges, saying, "It looks like one wants to condemn one only because of his behaviour judged as undesirable" and noted the flagrant absence of "motives" and "non-identification of the killer" that he described as "real phantom". So far, there has been no reaction from Iranian authorities and the press there is ignoring the trial is expected to last until Friday. ENDS MAZLOOMAN 20601 |
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