ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Abdullah Hassanzadeh still regrets that Kurdish-Iranian leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou did not heed his advice about taking greater care before agreeing to meet Iranian government agents at a Vienna hotel, where he was found dead 24 years ago this month.
Hassanzadeh, Ghassemlou’s close friend and one-time successor as leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) -- which has a history of separatism and armed struggle on behalf of Iran’s largely poor Kurdish minority -- remembers meeting with the old party boss just before he left for the meeting in the Austrian capital with representatives of Iran’s Islamic Republic.
“I said to him that the talks must be open, conducted with the Iranian government and mediated by a third foreign party. But unfortunately none of that happened,” Hassanzadeh regrets.
In an interview with Rudaw, he said that Ghassemlou should have been “more careful and taken precautions” before agreeing to the talks at the hotel room, where he was shot three times at close range. Two Kurdish colleagues who accompanied him also were killed.
The triple murders took place on July 13, 1989, but the Austrian court investigating the case did not issue arrest warrants until more than four months later, by which time two Iranian suspects who were briefly held by Austrian authorities – and another who was never even detained – had been allowed to leave for Tehran.
The warrants against them were never executed, and Hassanzadeh says that chances of seeking justice for the killings remain grim.
“In order to revive his assassination case, finances, manpower and evidence are needed and we have shortage of all three,” he laments.
Ghassemlou’s wife did launch an investigation campaign immediately after the killing, Hassanzadeh notes.
“But the Austrian court did not help the case. In fact, the Austrians took the side of the Iranians, taking into account their own interests first,” he regrets.
“Even if we had taken the case to an international court, we still would have lost because we don’t have hard evidence to rely on,” he says.
According to Hassanzadah, Iraq’s current president and head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani, had helped facilitate the first round of meetings with the Iranians.
“But in the second round, the Iranians found excuses to nudge Talabani, and Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella, aside,” Hassanzadeh claims.
