Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, September 28, 2021—The assassination of Dr. Kazem Rajavi, carried out by Iranian regime operatives in 1990, will be investigated not as a murder case but as “genocide” and “crime against humanity,” the Swiss Federal Criminal Court declared in a September 23 verdict. The federal criminal court ordered the federal prosecutor’s office to open an investigation into the crime.
Dr. Rajavi, the older brother of the Iranian Resistance Leader Massoud Rajavi, was a renowned jurist and Iran’s first ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva after the 1979 revolution. He was the representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Switzerland a respected human rights defender. Dr. Rajavi was assassinated by the Iranian regime’s terrorists on April 24, 1990, near his home in Geneva.
Dr. Rajavi was assassinated less than two years after the regime carried out a mass purge of Iranian dissidents in Iran’s prisons, executing more than 30,000 political prisoners in the span of a few months, which has become known as the 1988 massacre. The Swiss court refers to the plaintiff’s reasoning that Professor Rajavi was assassinated following the 1988 massacre, which should be, according to his reasoning, legally qualified as genocide and a crime against humanity.
The assassination of Dr. Rajavi was carried out by a 13-member commando team sent from Tehran on the direct order of then Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, against whom a Swiss court issued an international arrest warrant in 2006.
After Dr. Rajavi assassination, the Swiss Prosecutor of Vaud canton began a criminal investigation against 13 individuals accused of the crime as well as Fallahian, who had orchestrated the assassination. In 1997 an international arrest warrant was issued against these 13 people, and another was issued against Fallahian in 2006.
In 2020 the public prosecutor of the canton of Vaud informed the complainants of Dr. Rajavi’s murder case that it intended to close the case due to the expiration of a thirty-year limitation period. At the time, the Iranian resistance stressed that Dr. Kazem Rajavi’s assassination was “in direct relation” with the 1988 massacre, which meant the case would not be subject to the 30-year statute of limitation.
In February 2021, the case was finally referred to the Federal Criminal Court, which ruled that “for crimes with a historical dimension, such as genocide and crimes against humanity,” the imprescriptibility could be maintained, and the investigation would not expire after 30 years.
According to Swiss law, such a crime “is punished with a custodial sentence of life or a custodial sentence of at least ten years whoever, with the intention of destroying in whole or in part a national, racial or religious group, ethnic, social or political, as such, kills members of the group or seriously undermines their physical or mental integrity. “
The court confirmed that the assassination of Dr. Rajavi had “decided and ordered in 1982 or 1983 by Fallahian.”
According to the court’s findings, “Iranian commandos traveled to Switzerland three times between October 1989 and April 1990. During the last trip, the commando set up and composed of thirteen people with Iranian service passports bearing the mention ‘on mission’ surveilled the victim for several days before taking action on April 24, 1990.”
The Federal Tribunal thus rejected the arguments of the public prosecutor’s office of the Confederation and ordered it to investigate the case in the context of crimes against humanity and genocide. The court also ordered the confederation prosecution to pay court costs in favor of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
The Iranian regime has a long history of engaging in political assassinations on foreign soil. Dozens of dissidents have been murdered by regime assassins in the past decades. In the past three years, the regime has made several failed terrorist attempts against members of the Iranian Resistance in France, Albania, and the United States. Earlier this year, a Belgian court sentenced an Iranian diplomat to 20 years in prison for plotting a bombing attack against a big rally of the Iranian opposition in France.
The regime’s terrorist activities have led to its ambassador being expulsed from Albania and prompted warnings by European authorities.
