German Court Finds Iran’s Leaders Ordered Slayings

In a ruling that shook the foundations of Germany’s controversial relationship with Iran, a court here found that Tehran’s top leadership ordered the 1992 gangland-style killing of four Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant.

The ruling was the first known instance of a court verifying Tehran’s sponsorship of murder on foreign soil. It prompted calls from all sides for an immediate review and downgrading of Germany’s ties to the Islamic state.

Germany expelled four Iranian diplomats Thursday afternoon and recalled its ambassador to Tehran. The European Union invited its member countries to recall their ambassadors from Iran as well.

Tehran in turn recalled its ambassador from Germany and ordered four German diplomats expelled from Iran, said the official Iranian news agency IRNA. Iran rejected the court’s ruling as “unjust and biased,” news services reported.

“The political leaders of Iran gave the order [for the murders], for the sole purpose of staying in power,” said Frithjof Kubsch, the presiding judge in the closely watched trial. “The order-givers and string-pullers were Iranian state functionaries.”

Kubsch’s words elicited applause and whoops of delight from Iranian and Kurdish emigres seated in the visitors’ gallery.

Germany is Iran’s largest trading partner and its closest European friend. A cooling of the Bonn-Tehran relationship would please Washington, which considers Germany’s tolerance of the Islamic regime a rare irritant in an otherwise-solid U.S.-German friendship.

“The United States commends the courage of the German prosecutor, the German judges and the witnesses,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said in Washington on Thursday. “We are confident that the verdict was based on the court’s objective evaluation of the evidence.”

He added: “We would be very pleased if the European governments moved to choke off trade with Iran.”

The murder trial began more than three years ago as a relatively straightforward case, with a six-judge panel considering whether five defendants were guilty of opening fire on Kurds who were dining in Berlin’s Mykonos restaurant. Among the dead was Sadegh Sharafkandi, the exiled leader of the Iranian Democratic Party of Kurdistan.

The trial took on a growing political importance as it proceeded, however, and the prosecution said that in addition to murder convictions it would seek a unique ruling on state sponsorship by Iran.

On Thursday, Kubsch did not accuse by name any Iranian officials. But he said the evidence showed that a Tehran body called the Committee for Special Operations had ordered the murders and that the Iranian president, supreme religious leader, intelligence minister and other security officials were active with the committee.

Thus, without naming them, Kubsch implicated President Hashemi Rafsanjani, religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian.

Germany had already taken the unusual step of issuing an arrest warrant for Fallahian more than a year ago. Though Germany has no practical way of executing the warrant, it sent Iran a strong signal by issuing the writ and withstood days of resulting angry demonstrations in front of its embassy in Tehran.

Now, with Thursday’s verdict, Germans are wondering again whether German citizens in Iran may be in danger of retaliation. On Thursday, Bonn renewed earlier warnings against travel to Iran.

In its ruling, the six-judge panel found four of the five defendants guilty. Two of them--attack organizer Kazem Darabi, an Iranian, and gunman Abbas Rhayel, a Lebanese--were given life sentences.

Two other Lebanese who aided in the attack were sentenced to 11 years and to five years and three months in prison. The fifth defendant was acquitted.

In the street in front of the courthouse there was jubilation as Kubsch read his lengthy decision. Hundreds of Iranian exiles stood waving red, white and green banners amid a massive police presence that included attack dogs. The exiles blew whistles, played Iranian music and shouted anti-regime slogans that were audible in the ornate courtroom two stories above.

“Of all the acts of terrorism that this regime has perpetrated outside its borders, this is the first one that has gone through an entire judicial process,” said Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a well-organized resistance group operating from France and Iraq.

However, he and other opponents of the Iranian government said they will not be satisfied unless German politicians now sharply curtail this country’s dealings with the Islamic regime. Some of the exiles called on Bonn to throw out the Iranian ambassador; others were urging a trade embargo. Still more said it is time Germany started cultivating ties with the anti-Tehran resistance.

“Everything depends now on the political reaction in Bonn,” Gobadi said. “If nothing is done, it will make a mockery of the Western judiciary system and send the worst possible signal to Iran. It will give the impression that you can get away with murder.”

In Bonn, members of the Federal Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee urged that other European Union nations recall their ambassadors to Tehran and that foreign policy strategists meet and develop a new, unified policy toward Iran.