This afternoon the French police discovered the body of an Iranian opposition publisher, Dr. Reza Mazlouman, in his apartment on the outskirts of Paris, dead of two bullet wounds to the chest, and one to the head. Family members and other sources close to Mazlouman claim that he was murdered by Iranian government agents. The French media announced that he had been "assassinated."
While the French police have only begun their investigation, Dr. Mazlouman's murder fits a known pattern of assassinations carried out by Iranian intelligence agents. Dr. Mazlouman had been active with opposition groups allied to former Prime Ministers Ali Amini and Shahpour Bakhtiar, and more recently, with the Flag of Freedom Organization of Dr. Manoucher Gandji, whom agents of the Islamic Republic have tried to assassinate on at least three occasions, according to French police reports.
Police investigations in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and France have concluded that "hit teams" dispatched from Tehran have been responsible for the murder of opponents of the Islamic regime living in Europe over the past eight years . Despite the body of evidence proving the involvement of Iranian government agents in these murders, including the arrest warrant issued earlier this year by the German police against Iran's Minister of Intelligence and Security, Ali Fallahian, for his role in ordering the 1992 assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Sadegh Sharafkindi in Berlin, the European Union has done nothing to limit the activities of Iranian government intelligence agents in Europe. Instead, Europe has maintained a "critical dialogue" with Tehran that has allowed European companies to benefit from a multi-billion dollar business relationship with Tehran, financed by European taxpayers, while Iran continues to murder its opponents overseas and to support terrorist operations aimed at undermining the Middle East peace process and U.S. allies in the Middle East.
The presumed authors of the attack against Dr. Mazlouman are well known to French and German police authorities, and yet they have been allowed to operate freely under commercial cover for the past two years.
The Foundation considers that Dr. Mazlouman is only the latest in the long series of victims of Europe's "critical dialogue" with Tehran, and calls on the European Union to crack down on Iranian government-sponsored terrorism on European soil.
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. Contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director (exec@iran.org). FDI materials, including the FDI Newswire, are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org/.