The Center has counted more than
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 8:19 am
“Seriously increasing risk”
Activists accuse Iran of killing and kidnapping hundreds of opponents in the four decades since the overthrow of the shah’s royalist government.
Among the most notorious is the stabbing death of Shah Shapour Bakhtiar’s last prime minister and his secretary outside Paris in August 1991.
An Iranian, Ali Vakili Rad, was convicted of the murder, but in 2010 was paroled by France and returned to Iran where he was greeted as a hero.
The September 1992 assassination of four Iranian Kurdish militants at the phone number library Mykonos restaurant in Berlin resulted in a German arrest warrant against the Iranian intelligence minister and a crisis in relations between Iran and the West.
“The kidnapping and subsequent murder of Ruhollah Zam is part of a pattern of intimidation, extrajudicial killings and kidnappings of dissidents by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran that has lasted for decades,” said Roya Boroumand, Executive Director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center based in the United States.
Screenshot of video of Iranian opposition activist Ruhollah Zam after his arrest by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Youtube)
540 Iranians whose successful assassination or kidnappings have been attributed to Iran, peaking in the 1990s with more than 397 killed, including 329 in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Boroumand said there had been a “slowdown” in these activities after the international reaction following the Mykonos affair.
But a growing number of cases “indicate a seriously growing risk” for Iranian dissidents abroad.
Activists accuse Iran of killing and kidnapping hundreds of opponents in the four decades since the overthrow of the shah’s royalist government.
Among the most notorious is the stabbing death of Shah Shapour Bakhtiar’s last prime minister and his secretary outside Paris in August 1991.
An Iranian, Ali Vakili Rad, was convicted of the murder, but in 2010 was paroled by France and returned to Iran where he was greeted as a hero.
The September 1992 assassination of four Iranian Kurdish militants at the phone number library Mykonos restaurant in Berlin resulted in a German arrest warrant against the Iranian intelligence minister and a crisis in relations between Iran and the West.
“The kidnapping and subsequent murder of Ruhollah Zam is part of a pattern of intimidation, extrajudicial killings and kidnappings of dissidents by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran that has lasted for decades,” said Roya Boroumand, Executive Director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center based in the United States.
Screenshot of video of Iranian opposition activist Ruhollah Zam after his arrest by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Youtube)
540 Iranians whose successful assassination or kidnappings have been attributed to Iran, peaking in the 1990s with more than 397 killed, including 329 in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Boroumand said there had been a “slowdown” in these activities after the international reaction following the Mykonos affair.
But a growing number of cases “indicate a seriously growing risk” for Iranian dissidents abroad.