Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
!NTFRNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, SATURDAY.SUNDAY,APRIL 12-13, 1997
r ĒUUnlikelyto Hit
Iran With Sanctions
abroad were approved
TehranAide
Key Witn'ess
In Germany
By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Sen'ia
BERLIN - Last October, nearly
tl:rree years into the extraordinary trial
that would prove that Iran' s most pO,wer~
fui leaders gave orders to assassmare
Kurdish dissidents abroad, the German
prosecutor, Bruno Jost, decided the time
was ripe to play his trump card. ,'
Mr, Jost introduced into the Berlin
courtroom' a 39-year-old Iranian exile
,who was called "Witness C." His real
:name was Abol-Hassem Mesbahi, a recent
defector from Tehran who' was
brought to the prosecution' sattention
by former president Aboi-Hassan Banisadr,
who himself had fled to exile in
France in 1981.
'
Until Mr. Mesbahi was interrogated,
even Mr, Jost did not realize whal a
:trove of evidencehe would uncover for
'the case.
, Mr. Mesbahi served until 1995 as an
:aide to President Hashemi Rafsanjani.
'He also was one of Iran' s most senior
!intelligence officials, who supervised
,key foreign intelligence., networks
among Iranians scattered in Europe.
"He may prove to be the most valuable
and well-informed defector from
Iran in the past decade or more," said a
'Western diplomat who has monitored the
case closely .• ,Nobodyelse has provided
that kind of insight into how the top levels
of Iran's leadership really function."
'Mr. Mesbahi's testimony was nothing
short of explosive. He described in
:detail 'how targets for _assassination
by a powerful
elite council known as the Committee
for Secret Operations and how the or~
ders for hit squads required the personal
signatures of Mr. Rafsanjani and
f\;yatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei,Iran'!:
:j;;araniountreligious leader:, "
Mr. Mesbahi also supplied personal
'accounts of discussions that herald~
the attack against three leading IraniaQ]
'Kurdish opposition figures, who werë
,~unne~ d~wn at the Mykonos re~taur~t
~n Berhn m September 1992. HIS testImony
was checked by Germany's for-
;eign intellige!lèe seryice, th~
Buridesnachrichtendienst, or
BND.
To the amazed delight of
the prosecution, Mr. Me~bahi's
bona fides were venfied
every s!epof the wa~. A.:
:phot.ographôf~. RafsanJ~I:
$ignmg a secunty treaty WIth
President Edouard Shevard~
nadZe of Georgia showed Mr.
Mesbahi standing behind
them.
He 'also offered unim-
,peachable details about secret
,negotiations with German:
politicians tha~ proved ~~
played a promment role In
:securing the release ofR':ldol~
:Cordes, a German busmess,
'executive who was takenhos-
,tage in Lebanon in 1987.
Even more important, perhaps,
was the emotional reaction
in Tehran that greeted
the news that Mr. Mesbahi had
defected to turn state's evidence
in the Mykonos trial.
Tehran's govemment'"Con-
,trolled press sought to .discredit
him. He was descnbed
!as a washed-up intelligence
'agent who had been rejected
for'ajob at the Foreign Ministry
when he'~turned home,
'The newspaper Tehrari
Times said he became embroiled.,in,
se\'.c!!t.a1, fmancial
~
SCanlSand rw'tup $3Ô mÜJlon
in fraudulent debt. When an
arrest warrant was issued
against him in 1995, he purportedly
fled to Europe.
Mohammed Javad Zarif,
Iran' s deputy foreign minister,
on Friday criticized the
German court for reaching a
verdict that "solely relied on
'remarks of terrorists and hijackers,
whose arrest warrants
have been issued by the
Iranian judiciary. " '
•'These elements are members
of couriterrevolutionary
groups whose aim is to mar
the prestige of Iran, " he said.
But the three-judg~
tribunal that heard Mr. Mes-:
bahi 's testimony - some of it
in secret - found it persuas,
ive enough to implicate Iran' s
leadership for the fust time in
terrorist actions abroad.
During several hours of
reading the court opinion, the
presidingjudge, FrithjofKubsch,
referred repeatedly to details
furnished by'Mr. Mes~
,bahi that left no doubt that the:
highest levels of ~:s lead-'
ership ordered the killmgs: •
Many of the sup~ortmg:
documents in the court s verdict
- which sentenced an
Iranian grocer and a Lebanese
accomplice to life in prison,
,with two other Lebanese men
,getting jail terms of five to Il
iyears - were not ~ade pu~:
,lic. German OffiCIaiS saId
,there was much sensitive in-
:telligence material in'the trial,
that required an embargo. ,
Sources close to Chancellor
'Helmut Kohl said, meanwhile,
that the United States did not'
'convey any useful intelligence;
data despite Washington:s!
eagerness to pr~)Vethat.Iran Si
'leaders engage m terronsm.
200