Killings The term "chain murders" was first used to describe the murder of six people in late 1998. The first two killed were 70-year-old
Dariush Forouhar (secretary general of the opposition party, the
Nation of Iran Party), and his wife
Parvaneh Eskandari, whose mutilated bodies were found in their south
Tehran home on 22 November 1998. Forouhar received 11 knife wounds and Eskandari 24. Their home, which was later ransacked, was thought to be under 24-hour surveillance by the
Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran, thus casting suspicion on that ministry for at least complicity in the murder. On 2 December 1998,
Mohammad Mokhtari, an Iranian writer, left his residence and did not return home. A week later his body was identified at the coroner's office. The next to disappear was
Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, an author and "one of the most active translators of the country," whose body was discovered four days after leaving his office on 8 December. Pooyandeh and Mokhtari's bodies were both found around Shahriar, a "mini-city" in the south of Tehran, and both had apparently been strangled. In the summer of 1996, there had been
an unsuccessful attempt to kill a busload of 21 writers en route to a poetry conference in
Armenia. At two in the morning, while most of his passengers were sleeping, the driver of the bus attempted to steer the bus off a cliff near the Heyran Pass. "When the driver tried to jump out to save himself, a passenger grabbed the wheel and steered the bus back onto the road." The driver tried it a second time, "diving out of the vehicle just as it careened toward the edge of the 1,000-foot free fall." The bus hit a boulder and stopped, saving the lives of 21 writers. The driver ran away. The passengers were taken to a nearby Caspian town by authorities, interrogated, and warned "to discuss the event with no one." The person thought to be the first victim was Kazem Sami Kermani, an "Islamic nationalist and physician" who had opposed the
Shah and served as Minister of Health in the brief post-
revolutionary provisional government of Prime Minister
Mehdi Bazargan. He was later a member of the first
Majles where he criticized the government for its continuation of the
Iran–Iraq War after the
Liberation of Khorramshahr. He was murdered on 23 November 1988 in his clinic in Tehran by an axe-wielding assailant. In Iran, conservative daily newspapers also blamed "foreign sources intend on creating an environment of insecurity and instability in the country," for the killings. On 4 January 1999, the public relations office of the Ministry of Information "unexpectedly" issued a short press release claiming "staff within" its own Ministry "committed these criminal activities … under the influence of undercover rogue agents": "The despicable and abhorring recent murders in Tehran are a sign of chronic conspiracy and a threat to the national security. The Information Ministry based on their legal obligations and following clear directives issued by the Supreme Leader and the President, made the discovery and uprooting of this sinister and threatening event the priority action for the Ministry. With the cooperation of the specially appointed Investigatory committee of the President, the Ministry has succeeded to identify the group responsible for the killings, has arrested them and processed their cases through the judicial system. Unfortunately a small number of irresponsible, misguided, headstrong and obstinate staff within the Ministry of Information who are no doubt under the influence of undercover rogue agents and act towards the objectives of foreign and estranged sources committed these criminal activities".
Saeed Emami or Islami, the deputy security official of the
Ministry of Information, and his colleagues and subordinate staff,
Mehrdad Alikhani, Mostafa Kazemi and Khosro Basati, were arrested for the dissident murders. According to
Indymedia UK, "the agent named as the mastermind behind the assassinations, Saeed Emami, was reported to have killed himself in prison by drinking a bottle of hair remover." Defendant Ali Rowshani admitted murdering Mokhtari and Pouyandeh. But he said he had done so under orders from Mostafa Kazemi, a former head of internal security at the intelligence ministry and another man, Merhdad Alikhani. Another pair of defendants admitted killing the Forouhars, a husband and wife found dead at home from multiple stab wounds. They too said they had received orders from Kazemi and Alikhani. Another man said he had assisted in the murder. Kazemi was reported telling the court on Saturday he had been the mastermind behind the killings, while Alikhani said the decision was taken "collectively." The Iranian press reported that Emami was not only responsible for the deaths of Forouhar, Mokhtari, Pooyandeh and Sharif, but also earlier killings in the 1980s and 1990s of
Saidi Sirjani, the
Mykonos restaurant assassinations, the unsuccessful 1995 attempt to stage a bus accident in the mountains and kill 21 writers, and the unexpected death of
Ahmad Khomeini, (
Ayatollah Khomeini's son). Human rights activist
Shirin Ebadi claims Emami's "friends reported that he belonged to a notorious gang of hard-core religious extremists who believed that the enemies of Islam should be killed." Saeed Emami's arrest was not revealed, however, until 3 June 1999, six months after his reported suicide. Several facts added to skepticism over whether the true culprits of the murders had been found and justice done, namely: Emami was believed to have had "round-the-clock" surveillance while in prison, being the prime suspect of a serial political murder case that aroused the whole country; hair-removal cream available in Iran is unlikely to be lethal when ingested; that Emami's confession was not considered evidence and made public by the presiding judge who deemed it "unrelated to the case;" that no photos of the agents of the Ministry of Intelligence tried in Dec 2000 – Jan 2001 were published, their identity remained a "state secret". Most Iranians are convinced their "confessions" are part of a deal to allow them freedom after the trials, irrespective of the verdict. and There are conflicting reports on the manner of [Emami's] suicide. His body or its photograph have never been publicly seen and even in the 'Behesht Zahra' graveyard, where he is said to have been buried, no grave has been registered in his name. According to Iranterror.com, "it was widely assumed that he was murdered in order to prevent the leak of sensitive information about
MOIS operations, which would have compromised the entire leadership of the Islamic Republic." There was an antagonism between the authorities and the victims' relatives. The lawyer for the victims relatives,
Nasser Zarafshan, was arrested for "publicizing the case", for which her bail was set at the equivalent of $50,000 as opposed to $12,500 for some of the accused murderers. At least one of the victims' relatives, Sima Sahebi, the wife of Pouyandeh, was also arrested "for publishing a letter criticizing them for not allowing us to hold a memorial of the second anniversary of their death." ==Investigations==