(Bethesda, MD - Jan. 2, 2001) - In yet another blow to the credibility of the Islamic Republic, a U.S. District Court in Washington, DC condemned the Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) to pay $300 million in punitive damages to the family of slain opposition leader Cyrus Elahi, in a judgment rendered on Dec. 20, 2000. The family was awarded another $11 million in compensatory damages.
Cyrus Elahi, a deputy to Flag of Freedom Organization leader Dr. Manoucher Ganji, was shot eight times and killed by an assassin using a gun with a silencer outside of his apartment in Paris, France on Oct. 23, 1990. Two Iranian intelligence operatives engaged in planning the assassination were subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted in a French court. The evidence gathered by the French court, including their sworn confessions, "strongly indicates that the original plot, conceived in Tehran by MOIS, was to assassinate a number of individuals opposed to the Tehran regime, including Dr. Ganji, Dr. Cyrus Elahi, and others," U.S. District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green wrote.
FDI Director Kenneth R. Timmerman served as an expert witness for the Elahi family during the trial, and described the orchestrated MOIS campaign to assassinate political dissidents living overseas.
"As explained by Mr. Timmerman," Judge Green wrote in the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law accompanying the decision, "the Iranian government was concerned that Iranians living in exile would coalesce around a single opposition leader and become a threat to the regime. Mr. Timmerman described the pattern of terrorism and assassination undertaken by the Islamic Republic as being to 'decapitate the opposition.'"
FDI's list of Iranian exiles assassinated by the regime, entered as Exhibit 29 by the Elahi family lawyers, was called by Judge Green "persuasive evidence of the pattern of assassinations instituted by the Iranian government to silence its critics. Mr. Timmerman testified that in those cases of assassination he had investigated, the Iranian government consulate or embassy was directly involved in providing safehouses, automobiles, money, passports, and escape routes to the perpetrators of those offenses."
Since U.S. courts began inflicting high monetary penalties against the Iranian regime for its terrorist acts in 1998, Tehran has been more subdued in its harassment of Iranian dissidents living in exile. Instead, it has resumed a campaign to murder and intimidate dissidents at home.
The FDI website contains hyper-links to a series of articles that appeared on WorldNetDaily.com starting on 9/25/2000 on the terror trials in the U.S., and how the Clinton administration ordered the Department of Justice to actually defend the Islamic Republic in U.S. courts.
FDI was one of the first human rights groups to condemn the assassination of opposition leaders Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar in November 1998, and believes the continued brutal actions of the Islamic Republic leaders against the political opposition contradict public statements by Iranian leaders and many of their sympathizers in the West of a "thaw" in Iran's domestic political situation.
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. Contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director (exec@iran.org). FDI materials are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org/.