To the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Frankfurt, 12.04.2003
We are writing this letter to you to ask you to investigate the extra judicial executions which occurred in the autumn of 1998 in Iran.
Our parents, Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar; who were both well known and established dissident figures who had fought for liberty, freedom and establishing of humanrights in Iran, were the first victims of these inhumane crimes. On 22nd November 1998, they were slaughtered in their house in Tehran, having been stabbed several times.
Right from the beginning, through the assistance of our lawyers, we endeavoured to carry out a proper and just judicial process within the judicial system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This process is described in detail in appendix 2.
Only a few days after the execution of our parents, two dissident writers; Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pooyandeh, also became victims of these extra judicial executions. Their bodies were found in the outskirts of Tehran.
These four crimes were referred in a single file to the Judiciary of the Armed Forces for investigation. Although such referral was not in accordance within the framework of the present law but all our objections were to no avail.
After this despite the weight of the public opinion in Iran, the constant pursuit by the families of the victims, our lawyers, many political dissidents in Iran and in exile and regardless of the disclosures carried out in the reformist press along with the international public opinion who all longed for a just process; the judiciary of the Islamic Republic ignored the numerous number of documents and evidence surrounding these crimes and instead investigated them as mere everyday felonies.
The courts did not bother to investigate the root cause, the organisational structure nor those individuals who authorised the religious orders for these crimes.
Eighteen individuals who were accused in the case were either high ranking employees of the Intelligence Ministry or members of the operational teams within the Ministry.
They all confessed to the following:
– They took orders according to their organisational structures and from their superiors.
– The extra judiciary executions were part of their duties which were carried out by the members of the operational teams and prior to the autumn of 1998 such assassinations were also carried out.
– Two of these accused who were high ranking members of the Intelligence Ministry confessed that they received the orders for the 1998 autumn assassinations from the then Minister, Hojat-ol-Islam Dori-Najaf Abadi.
The Minister according to his religious and civil position was capable of issuing edicts.
The two accused also mentioned similar crimes which were carried out on the orders of the previous Intelligence Minister, Hojat-ol-Islam Ali Fallahian.(appendix 3)
(Hojat-ol-Islam Fallahian was found guilty in absence by the courts in Germany for his part in extra judicial assassination of several Iranian political dissidents in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, 1995.)
All the above confessions were ignored by the judiciary investigating the files and were never followed up.
The extra judicial assassinations of Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad Jafar Pooyandeh and many other Iranian dissidents, inside and outside Iranian borders who were assassinated prior to the four above, are all crimes against humanity.
Since the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran has failed in its duty to carry out a proper investigation of the root causes of these crimes, it is necessary for human rights organisations associated with the UN to investigate these crimes.
We, in the name of the families of Forouhar, Mokhtari and Pooyandeh ask for your help and support in this regard.
Yours faithfully,
Parastou Forouhar, Arash Forouhar
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