EUROPE

IRAN'S SMOKING GUN

A GERMAN COURT JUDGES TEHRAN GUILTY OF MURDER, SETTING OFF A CRISIS IN EUROPE'S RELATIONS WITH THE ISLAMIC STATE

BY JAMES WALSH

"The Iranian political leadership was responsible," declared Judge Frithjof Kubsch, president of the tribunal. That one sentence vindicated all the time and care taken by German prosecutors, for it established the first legal, well-weighed condemnation of the Islamic Republic for sponsorship of terror abroad. Even as Iranian exiles danced and cheered outside the courthouse, Kubsch's judgment dealt a body blow to the policy of tender treatment extended to Iran by Germany and, officially, the European Union as a whole. Hunkering down in a crisis mode, the German Foreign Ministry termed the Mykonos murders "a flagrant breach of international law." Bonn recalled its ambassador to Tehran and expelled four Iranian diplomats, moves that were matched exactly by the Iranian government in calling the court decision a "shameless act." More ominously for Iran, Germany suspended its policy of friendly engagement "for the foreseeable future," suggesting that Europe may now edge closer to America's policy of isolating Tehran as an outlaw regime.

Different slants on Iran by the U.S. and Europe have pricked the Atlantic partnership for several years. However loath Bonn was to change its policy, though, it could not escape the court's logic. A painstaking parade of evidence established beyond doubt that Tehran's leadership had whistled up a gruesome act of assassination on German soil. Said Ruprecht Polenz, a senior member of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union: "Sending hit teams into another country and executing the opposition people there is barbaric and shows that Iran does not respect basic law." The E.U.'s 14 other countries, as well as Finland and Australia, were ready to recall their envoys to Iran also.

The assassinations occurred on Sept. 17, 1992, as delegates from the Democratic Party of Kurdistan-Iran were in Berlin for a convention of the Socialist International. Sadegh Sharafkandi, the party's general secretary, was dining in a back room of the Mykonos with eight other oppositionists. Just before midnight, two men with automatic guns burst in screaming in Farsi, "You sons of whores!" They sprayed more than 30 rounds into Sharafkandi, two colleagues and a translator as others dived for cover. One diner who escaped harm was Parviz Dastmalchi, now 48, an exiled Iranian author and political analyst who lives in Berlin. "It was terrible," he says. "We knew of such executions from books and articles, but it's a completely different story when it happens to you."

The inquiry played out like a detective novel. Tipped off by federal intelligence agents, German police fairly quickly rounded up five of the eight men suspected of carrying out the murders: one Iranian and four Lebanese; the three others had fled Germany. After similar acts of mayhem in which the hand of Iran's leadership had left fingerprints, European governments either balked at following the trail of evidence or allowed suspects to go free. Prosecutors in the Berlin case were made of sterner stuff. "At the beginning, the state prosecutors were told by the government, 'Four dead, five suspects, that should be enough,' " says a source close to the case. It was not enough. As chief prosecutor Bruno Jost's investigation proceeded, German intelligence agencies opened their classified files. Then, last autumn, appeared the anonymous "Witness C": later identified as Abolhassan Mesbahi, 34, a former senior Iranian agent who had defected. He implicated the regime with detailed testimony on mechanics of the assassination plot.

What the mounting evidence portrayed, with a clear trail of weapons supply and chain of command, was a machinery of vengeance so elaborate as to seem an obsession of state. By the time German prosecutors issued an international arrest warrant for Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian a year ago, the smooth Fallahian had already incriminated himself by boasting on Iranian TV of Tehran's ability to deal "decisive blows" against Kurdish opponents abroad. His remark was recorded a few weeks before the Mykonos hit.

"The United States does not need to be convinced about Iran's role in supporting terrorism internationally," declared U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, who urged Europe to "choke off trade with Iran." Such a step looked highly improbable. Germany did more than $1.4 billion worth of business with the Islamic Republic last year, and has extended it $4.8 billion in loans. Yet the E.U.'s policy of "critical dialogue"--constructive engagement by another name--may take on a sharper edge. "We think that this critical dialogue should be more critical and a lot less dialogue," said a U.S. official.

According to Western intelligence agencies, Iran has for years used its embassy in Bonn as Terror Central, where hit squads packaged European operations ordered by Tehran. Weapons, fake identity papers and visas for the assassins would arrive at the embassy by diplomatic pouch. In the Mykonos case, Fallahian was indicted for hiring Kazem Darabi, an ex-agent of the Iranian spy agency VEVAK who ran a food and clothing store in Berlin. Darabi in turn recruited Abbas Rhayel, 30, and three other Lebanese. Darabi and Rhayel, the accused gunmen, were sentenced to life. Youssef Amin, who turned state's evidence, received 11 years and Mohamed Atris five years, three months. One defendant, Atallah Ayed, was acquitted.

Based on insiders' testimony of how assassination planning worked, the court, without naming names, concluded that the regime of President Rafsanjani and Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, approved the murders. What role Rafsanjani plays exactly in such plotting is still debated in the West, but at the least he appears to be hostage to a small yet powerful clique supported by radical mullahs. During the Berlin trial, witnesses received anonymous death threats and warnings about car accidents involving their children. Kohl's intelligence adviser, Bernd Schmidbauer, testified that Fallahian himself, in a 1993 visit to Bonn, had urged him to drop the prosecution.

Germany's Foreign Ministry had reason to brace for possible trouble. Tehran crowds surrounded the German embassy late last year when Khamenei's and Rafsanjani's names were cited in court. They pelted the embassy with stones, eggs and tomatoes and, provocatively, displayed blown-up photos of blindfolded U.S. embassy hostages during the 1979-81 crisis. A threat to do the same? Possibly, but Iran would have few friends left indeed if it went that far. Though Rafsanjani probably would like to cool the crisis, Iran may find it hard to control the demons of hatred that the regime itself had let loose.

--Reported by Jordan Bonfante/Bonn, Scott MacLeod/Paris, Alexandra Stiglmayer/Berlin and Douglas Waller/Washington