PRESS RELEASE
(New Haven, Connecticut, May 27, 2008) Since 1979, the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been linked to at least 162 extrajudicial killings of the regime’s political opponents around the globe. The IHRDC’s new report is the most authoritative study of Iran’s global campaign of political assassination to appear to date.
No Safe Haven: Iran’s Global Assassination Campaign explores the government mechanisms that supported this policy by focusing on nine of the best documented incidents. These incidents provide compelling evidence that senior government officials, particularly those within the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards, were responsible for a widespread and systematic policy of extra-judicial killings. The report complements an earlier IHRDC publication, Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination.
The first successful overseas political assassination that can be linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran was that of Shahriar Shafiq, the nephew of the deposed Shah of Iran, who was shot dead in Paris in December 1979. The last political assassination, outside the territory of Iran and Iraq, which can be linked directly to the Islamic Republic was that of Dr. Reza Mazlouman, deputy leader of the Flag of Freedom Organization, who was murdered, also in Paris, in May 1996. The report identifies 19 different countries around the world in which Iranian assassins have operated, including the United States, Pakistan, India, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
“Iran’s global assassination campaign was predicated on the simple principle that for opponents of the Islamic Republic of Iran there can be no safe haven, anywhere in the world. It flourished in contravention of both international and national legal regimes, and was planned at the highest levels of state. It is a campaign whose organizers and perpetrators within the Islamic Republic of Iran must be held accountable,” said Tom Parker, Executive Director of the IHRDC.
No Safe Haven: Iran’s Global Assassination Campaign is currently available in English on IHRDC’s website at http://www.iranhrdc.org. A Farsi version of the report will be released in June. This report is the second in a planned series of three reports on Iran’s international campaign of political assassination. The first report in this series, Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination, is also available at the IHRDC’s website.
For further information please contact: Tom Parker, Executive Director Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (203) 772-2218 tparker@iranhrdc.org