Is the Kurdistan Region hosting an assassin from Iran?

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The visit of Muhammad Jafar Sahrarudi to the Kurdistan Region, as part of an Iranian parliamentary delegation has raised objections by Iranian Kurds. The reason is that Sahrarudi is believed by Iranian Kurds to be the assassin of their late leader, Abdulrahman Ghassemlou.

Eastern Kurds (or Iranian Kurds) have raised their concerns on social media. Even members of Ghassemlou’s Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) have raised questions about the silence of their leaders on the visit.

Sahrarudi, the office manager of Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, is suspected of killing Ghassemlou during a meeting with Iranian officials in Vienna in 1989.

A KDPI leader has said that those concerns will be raised by the leadership of the Kurdistan Region.

Sahrarudi was allegedly injured during the assassination.  However, there are different accounts of his injury. A member of the Iranian army in a letter to Muhammad Nurizad, a famous Iranian journalist, talked Sahrarudi’s role in the assassination. The headline of his letter was:  “The mark of the wound on the shoulder of the office manager.”

Hama Nezif Qadiri, a member of the KDPI leadership, expressed his party’s strong objection to Sahrarudi presence in Kurdistan.  “That reception was unexpected,” Qadiri said.

“For us he is a terrorist,” Qadiri said, likening him to one of Saddam Hussein’s henchmen. “It would be the same if we had received Ali Hasan Majid,” he said, adding that receiving Sahrarudi was an insult to all Kurdish leaders struggling for the cause, in particular to Ghassemlou, who he said had dedicated all his life to serving Kurdistan.

Raza Kabi, deputy leader of the Kurdistan Toilor’s Movement, told Rudaw: “This kind of reception tarnishes Kurdistan’s reputation. Individuals like Sahrarudi visit Kurdistan for a purpose,” he added, stressing that Erbil should reevaluate such relations.

Journalist Saman Rasulpour believes that Kurdistan officials do not take the feelings of Iranian Kurds into consideration. “In such kind of diplomacy there is no sensitivity towards someone like Sahrarudi. Besides, political parties of the Kurdistan Region do not respect the feelings of the Eastern Kurds,” he said.

Rasulpour, however, criticized the leaders of Eastern Kurdistan: “The policies of the political parties of Eastern Kurdistan towards the Kurdistan Region have resulted in a one-sided relationship, where political parties of Eastern Kurdistan are sensitive about the issues related to the Kurdistan Region while the Kurdistan Region does not observe any sensitivity toward the Eastern Kurdistan.”

“The political parties of Eastern Kurdistan do not express their discontent with force in this kind of situation. For instance, they had expressed their concerns over the previous visits of Sahrarudi, but it seems that expression of discontent has been ineffective,” Rasulpour added.

Mustafa Mawludi, deputy leader of the KDPI, rejected that the party had been silent over such visits to Kurdistan.

Mawludi told Rudaw: “We were not happy with the way Sahrarudi was received in Kurdistan. It hurt the feelings of Eastern Kurds. In our meetings with officials of the Kurdistan Region we might complain about receiving such kinds of individuals.”

Khamush Omer Abdullah, a university professor, said:  “When a delegation from one country visits another country, the visiting country submits the names of members of the delegation to the foreign ministry of the host country. The host country can refuse to receive a member of delegation.

“However, this refusal is not obligatory, the visiting country can still delegate the member that as refused by the host country, in particular if it is in a stronger position than the host country,” Abdulla commented.

He added: “The situation of the Kurdistan Region is a bit more complicated. It does not have a foreign ministry. It has the department of foreign relations, which is more protocol based and does not have the authority to refuse entry to a member of a delegation. But there are Kurds at the Iraqi foreign ministry.”

A posting on the KDPI website said that, had the Kurdistan Region raised its voice against Sahrarudi’s visit, “it would have been a source of comfort and a great show of national unity. In doing so, Iran would have looked at the Kurdistan Region and its national sensitivity in a different way.”