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On July 13 1989 three Kurds were murdered in Vienna. The victims were Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, Secretary General of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI); Abdullah Qaderi-Azar, deputy for the KDPI in Europe; and Fadhil Rassoul, of Iraqi Kurdish origin and an Austrian national.
Circumstances of the Crime
These three Kurds were attending a pre-arranged meeting in Vienna with representatives of die Teheran government on July 12. The site chosen by Fadhil Rassoul was a flat belonging to his friend, Mrs. Renata Faistauer, on the top floor of 5 Linkenbahnstrasse, not far from the Hilton Hotel. Mrs. Raistauer was away at the time.
Members of the Delegation from Teheran
MOHAMMAD JAFAR SAHRAROUDI (also known as Rahimi), leader of the Iranian delegation, senior official in the Ministry for die Interior, specialist in Kurdish affairs and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the fifteentii division of die Pasdaran army (soldiers of die Islamic Revolution). Sahraroudi was die special envoy of Rafsandjani, the present President of Iran.
HADJI MUSTAFAWI (known as Adjwadi or Ladjewardi), a senior official in die Iranian intelligence service widi responsibility for die region of Azerbaijan West (Kurdistan). Mustafawi was die number two man in the Iranian delegation at die Vienna talks.
AMIR MANSOUR BOZORGIAN, officially Sahraroudi \s bodyguard.
The Kurdish Delegation
ABDUL RAHMAN GHASSEMLOU, bom on December 22, 1930 in Urmiya, Iranian Kurdistan, earned a doctorate in economics from Prague University. Married in 1952, Ghassemlou has two daughters resident in Sweden and of Swedish nationality. A member of die Kurdish resistance since the age of fourteen, Ghassemlou was elected Secretary General of die KDPI in 1973. He taught in Prague (which he was obliged to leave in 1976) and in Paris, where he had a large circle of French and other friends. His political career followed a fairly classic course. Very close to Communist ideology in 1948, he identified himself forty years later with the ideals of the Socialist International whose conferences he was invited to attend in recent years.
An accomplished man of letters, a well-informed polyglot and a persuasive public speaker, Ghassemlou was a redoubtable adversary of the ayatollahs in Iran. After the fall of the Shah, he was elected to the constituent assembly, but was unable to perform his functions, having been...