Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris

EXTERNAL (ITEMS 1,2,3 and 4)
TO: ALL SECT! ONS
AI Index: NWS 11/31/89
Distr: sc
Amnesty International
International Secretariat
1 Easton Street
London WC1X 8DJ
United Kingdom
FROM:
PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS
126
DATE:
3 AUGUST 1989
WEEKLY UPDATE 31/89
1 .. MDE 13/WU 03/89 EXTERNAL
3 AUGUST 1989
ASSASINATION OF ABDUL RAHMAN GHASSEMlOU. LEADER OF THE KURDISH
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF IRAN
Amnesty International has called on the Iranian authorities to answer
allegations that Iranian officials were involved in the assassination df an
Iranian Kurdish opposition leader and two of his associates in Vienna on
13 July. Amnesty International's call was made in a letter to the Speaker
of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, HOhjatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, who has now been elected President of the Islamic Republic 0
of Iran.
The victims were Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, 'leader of the
Kurdish Democratic Party (KOP) of Iran, Abdullah Ghader-Azar,
Representative in Europe of the KDP of Iran, and Fadhil Rassoul, a
researcher at the Austrian Institute of International Relations.
They were shot dead in a Vienna appartment, allegedly by the Iranian
officials they were meeting there. Dr Ghassemlou and his associates
attended the meeting without bodyguards.
The KDP of Iran had for some time been negotiating with the Iranian
Government for an end to armed conflict between them dating back to 1979.
The Kurdish representatives, who were seeking autonomy within the Islamic
Republic for Iran's Kurdish minority. were said to be optimistic that a
settlement was within reach. .Or Ghassemlou had angered some other factions
in the Iranian opposition by his willingness to negotiate w>th the Iranian
Government and by his stated belief that there was "no military solution"
to the Kurdish problem in Iran. He had distanced the KOP of Iran from the
Iraqi Government with which it had cooperated during the Gulf War, by
criticizing Iraq's use of chemical weapons against its own Kurdish
population in 1988.
Bath Iran and Iraq have accused each other of the assassinations, but
the circumstances of the killings suggest they were in fact carried out by
the Iranian officials at the meeting. Two of the Iranian officials present
at the scene of the killing have made themselves unavailable to assist the
Austrian police's inquiries into the incident. Mustafa Hajifadi, an
offici~l at the Centre for Strategic Research of the Intelligence Services
in Tehran, has apparently left Vienna, and Amir Mansour Bozorgian is