The End of the Dispensable Iranian

DAWN had always arrived in Berlin’s Turm Strasse with the bustling of shopkeepers and the drowsy hiss of buses pulling into their stops. Always, except on the morning of April 10, 1997. On that day, the street had been cleared of traffic and blocked to anyone but pedestrians. On the rooftop of every building leading to Nos. 91-92, snipers had been stationed.

Turm Strasse 91-92 is the address of Berlin’s highest criminal court. It is also the site of one of the least known, yet most momentous events in the contemporary history of Germany and Iran. The 1992 assassinations of four Iranian Kurdish leaders at a restaurant called Mykonos led to a trial that took nearly four years and culminated in a verdict, 10 years ago today, that implicated the Iranian leadership — the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei; the president at the time, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; and the foreign minister, Ali Velayati — as the masterminds of the crime. An arrest warrant had already been issued for the minister of intelligence, Ali Fallahian.

The New York Times, April 10, 2007