However, it was not long before more serious forensic evidence began to emerge from the Mykonos affair. In the waning days of Ayatollah Khomeini’s life, a special department had been set up for the physical elimination of critics and opponents of his regime. These were to be targeted and taken off the chessboard, whether they lived in Iran or overseas. Money was available, as were weapons. Safe houses and false identities were provided for those willing to do the dirty work. Gradually, the German authorities came to realize that their own soil was being used for the settling of scores by a nightmare regime with which they were doing lucrative business.
Hakakian’s book has a number of heroes, many of them Kurdish and Iranian secularists who have risked everything to keep the idea of resistance alive. But one would have to give a special acknowledgement to Bruno Jost, the German prosecutor who ended up risking everything to expose the machinations of the death squads. Those of you who have seen
Costa-Gavras’ Z will be entirely gripped by this tale, which unfolded at a time when trade and commercial relations between Germany and Iran were almost indecently warm. Iran’s former minister of intelligence,
Ali Fallahian, thought this close relationship would head off any inconvenient inquiries. But in the end, a four-year trial managed to call 176 witnesses, to successfully protect from intimidation those willing to testify, and to hand down a series of deadly accurate indictments. The Islamic Republic of Iran was definitively shown to be in the business of state-supported murder, outside its own borders as well as within. Not only Germany but all European Union members recalled their ambassadors from Iran. And the streets outside the courthouse were filled with thousands of jubilant Iranian democrats, who just for once saw true justice done. It’s hard for the reader not to weep at this point, as I did. I must urge you to get hold of this book.
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