Assassins of the Turquoise Palace

by Hakakian, Roya

  “I’m a human being and you’re ruining everything for me. I’ll never see my son. I’ve not seen him since he was born. And I’ll not see him if you keep doing this to me.”

  Yousef refused to speak to the investigators again. He ended his collaboration, just as the investigation ended. By March, Jost submitted the first draft of the indictment to the chief federal prosecutor. More than six months after Alexander von Stahl had assigned Jost to the case, the prosecutor had returned with his findings. The appendices alone, spanning Jost’s library of 187 binders, were evidence of an impeccable inquiry conducted on two continents. It included some rare finds: police files dating as far back as 1980, letters from Iran’s embassy and consular sections in support of Darabi on several occasions, and statements from refugee affairs agencies throughout Europe, sixty-eight witnesses, and eighteen experts and scholars.

  The chief federal prosecutor immediately alerted the ministry of justice. Just as quickly, the order came that he neither sign nor release the indictment until the justice ministry, its liaison at the chancellery, and the foreign ministry had approved it. To yield to the justice minister was reasonable, but to yield to the chancellery and the foreign ministry struck the chief federal prosecutor as a violation of the independence of his office.

  If anyone had the power to limit the scope of Bruno Jost’s investigation, it was the chief federal prosecutor. Yet contrary to what many, reading through the tea leaves of party affiliation, had forecasted, Alexander von Stahl, a political conservative, proved to be surprisingly original. Though his party had historically been uncritical of Iran in favor of Germany’s businesses, von Stahl refused to put any interests above the law. He fiercely protected Jost and his staff. For von Stahl, the nation’s security always came first, no matter the political consequences. Under his watch, the streets of his country would not be turned into rogues’ gaming grounds, be the victims German or not.

  Jost’s indictment, fearlessly articulating his findings, began with the words, “I accuse Yousef Amin, Kazem Darabi, and Abbas Rhayel of collectively conducting, on September 17, 1992, with reprehensible motives, a most heinous act of murder against four human beings in the city of Berlin.”

  The indictment alone was historic, if only for the single sentence no one on the continent had ever dared pen: “Kazem Darabi, the agent who organized the murders, acted upon the orders of the intelligence ministry of Iran.”

  Iran, that forbidden name, had at last been spoken.

  As illogical, even unlawful, as the justice ministry’s instructions were, von Stahl obeyed them and sent copies of the document to all three offices. Naming Iran went against the wishes of some of the most powerful figures in his own party, among them the foreign minister and the deputy justice minister. To accuse Iran’s regime of murder was not simply a blow to Tehran, but also to Bonn, Iran’s champion in the West.

  April arrived without a word from the ministries. The chief federal prosecutor reluctantly waited.

  Under the glare of fluorescent lights in the exam room, Parviz stood by, sometimes kissing, sometimes stroking the hand of his daughter, Salomeh. She looked even more frail in the hospital gown. He felt restless on behalf of the aspiring twelve-year-old dancer who had been told to remain still till the doctor returned. Two fainting spells, confounding several internists and pediatricians, had forced the father and daughter to see a cardiologist. Two fainting spells on her part, and a heap of guilt on her father’s part.

  Ever since the morning after the murders, Parviz had tried to keep her away from the fallout, to shield Salomeh from the news. Before picking her up on Tuesdays, their weekday together, he combed through the apartment to hide all signs of the case from view: photos, letters, phone messages, newspaper clippings. But the more he hid, the more she wanted to know.

  “How did it happen, Baba jaan? How many were they? Did anyone hit you?”

  “They came. They shot. They left. Nothing happened to me. Nothing at all,” he would say, wishing to move on.

  But her questions continued.

  “Did you have blood on you? Did you scream? Did you cry? Did you cry after? Were you scared? Are you scared now?”

  The depth of her curiosity astounded him. Once he yelled, “Enough!” and she stopped asking, but he knew she had not stopped thinking the haunting thoughts.

  The dream of becoming a dancer had turned her into a reluctant eater, and so he designed intricate plans for her meals. Instead of an elaborate dinner, he lined up an epicure’s array of tiny appetizers, which he paraded before his willowy ballerina at intervals. In the small, tidy apartment brimming with music, the father, surrendering to the daughter’s whims, had agreed to be a dance student in the tutelage of his diminutive coach. Though tone-deaf and hopelessly uncoordinated, his performances were memorable. What he lacked in talent he compensated for in wit. When he failed to remember his steps, he resorted to buffoonery. He limped cross-eyed across the floor, greeting an imaginary audience not with “guten Tag,” German for “good day,” but with his own Persian-German concoction, “gooz-be Tag,” or “fart on your day.” Nothing like a bit of vulgarity to bond a parttime father with his preadolescent child.

  What he could not fathom was that joy, however abundant, was no substitute for safety, which she no longer felt in his presence. Nor could he imagine her days in school, among the classmates who treated her like a sensation. Only some of the questions she asked him were her own. The rest were ones other children, mocking her father as the “superhero of the nightly news,” incessantly posed to her.

  When the first fainting spell came over Salomeh, he thought she had starved herself. But when she fainted on a full stomach, he blamed himself and his complicated life for his daughter’s malady—the malady no one could, thus far, diagnose. He had tried hard to keep her out of his own gloomy world lest the killers, or the mere idea of them, rob her of a happy childhood. But now it seemed the vacuum he had surrounded her with was robbing her of breath.

  Unlike Salomeh, Sara wanted to know nothing. In November, she had asked Shohreh where exactly her father was now and if he was in pain. In December, she had asked if she could buy him Christmas gifts and leave them under the tree until he returned. In February, she had asked if Shohreh intended to marry another man, and if so, was he going to move in with them. By March, she no longer asked. If she heard the name “Mykonos” on the radio, she rushed to turn it off. If she recognized the face of family or friends on television, she walked out of the living room.

  To help Sara and her mother cope with Noori’s absence, Shohreh’s parents briefly moved in with their daughter. Their presence strengthened Shohreh, though she could not tell them that it did. Words failed her. What she had in abundance was tears. Her parents stared at her over breakfast and waited in vain for her to form a sentence as simple as, “How did you sleep?”

  Her senses failed her. She rarely felt hunger. She barely tasted the perfunctory bites she took in front of them to reassure them of her appetite. Her parents, a government clerk and a housewife, had led serene and predictable lives. It was the security of their life that had given Shohreh the courage to rebel against them—she could go off to Europe, knowing that no matter what happened, she could always go home, she would always have them. But she wondered: Would Sara not have been better off with a pair of ordinary parents that would have been around for her whole life, rather than a pair of extraordinary ones who would be there only for a short time? All day, she turned these thoughts over in her mind’s kiln, blazing with anger.

  “To hell with his extraordinariness and every bit of his brilliance,” she would mumble.

  Noori enraged her now.

  Stick with me and you’ll be famous like you deserve to be, she remembered him promising the night they first met.

  Was his death to be her path to fame? she shouted in her head. Once again, he had abandoned them. All through her pregnancy and delivery she had been alone, while he had been in Kurdistan hiding. Remembering t
heir time apart, she grew even more furious wondering if it had been a warning to her to prepare to raise their child alone. Reason had abandoned her. She no longer thought of Noori’s absence as involuntary. He had left them, yet again. The thought came to her when she played their old family movies. She spent one night watching reams of film but found Noori only once, and only for a few seconds: walking with her along the racetrack where Sara had run her first competition. It was as if her husband had sketched their future. Everyone moved, posed, and smiled following Noori’s instructions, but he, their director, was invisible. His vision filled the screen, yet he would not be seen. Just like now. His multipocketed sports vest hung on the coat hanger. His Swiss Army knife lay on the mantelpiece. His bonsais withered on the windowsill. The wooden backgammon set he had carved, with the marble pieces he had chiseled, lay on the coffee table he had built. The stack of television guides in the magazine rack bore the highlights of his marker, which determined Sara’s weekly viewing allotment. When they finally turned in for the night, the beds they slept in had been built by him. In the morning, the jam they spread on their toast was labeled in his handwriting. He was everywhere, yet nowhere.

  • • •

  For Shohreh and Parviz, an occasional tea or dinner together was just as painful as it was vital. As they sat down to chat, Sara and Salomeh, old playmates, ran off to play. The girls talked of spells, potions, flying brooms, and their beloved storybook witch Bibi Blocksberg. They would dress up in green, and gather their dark hair in buns and tie it with a red ribbon in the witch’s style. They would put on an audio cassette of a Bibi Blocksberg adventure and act out the tale the best they could in the confines of the bedroom. Only Sara went further. If her mother was not watching, she dashed into the street shoeless with a broom in her hand. She dared to live the life she conjured, but Salomeh hesitated. Once, their lives had been similar enough to be interchangeable. But now loss had cast one child starkly distinguishable from the other.

  Meanwhile, the parents talked about what consumed them. Who had spied on them that night was still a mystery. They had briefly suspected Mehdi, until the coroner had confirmed Mehdi’s devotion. The pattern and location of Noori’s wounds showed that at the moment of the shooting, he had been dragged away from the line of fire. Mehdi had done that. He was why Noori was still breathing when the ambulance had arrived. They considered the two others who had joined the dinner unexpectedly that night. But that, too, seemed baseless because they had only come to the table at the urging of Aziz. They even wondered about the dead Kurds, especially the quieter of the Doctor’s two deputies. Was the mole among the dead? They would argue and empty one glass of tea after the next, but the mystery remained a mystery.

  May was approaching without a word from the ministries. The chief federal prosecutor’s patience had reached its limit. When he inquired about the delay, he was told the drafts he had sent were lost. Lost flabbergasted him. He sent new copies of the indictment to the ministries and again waited. A few more days passed without a word. It was clear the delay was meant to stall the case long enough for it to fade from the public’s attention.

  Since the release of the Bild article, accusations against the office of the chief federal prosecutor had mounted. The segment that Norbert and his colleague had been preparing aired on the national broadcast Kontraste. Its septuagenarian correspondent with his glowing bald head rimmed with a ring of white hair had begun the hour by promising to “break the silence” about the Mykonos case. The target of Kontraste’s criticism was the chief federal prosecutor.

  The reports enraged von Stahl, whose conduct and integrity had come under attack. Together with Jost, they pondered their predicament. Given how long the perpetrators had been in custody, Jost thought of an ingenious justification for releasing the indictment to Berlin’s high criminal court and requesting a trial date: any further delay on the part of the chief federal prosecutor would be a breach of the prisoners’ rights. By law, they had to either announce a trial date or set the accused free.

  Once more, von Stahl contacted the ministries, this time with an ultimatum disguised as a legal mandate. Word still did not come. So on May 17, he signed the indictment and submitted it to the Kammergericht, Berlin’s highest court. Never had a stroke of his pen spawned so many enemies.

  One month later, the court granted the chief federal prosecutor’s request for a trial. A date was to be announced shortly after Judge Frithjof Kubsch, the chief of division one overseeing national security cases, was appointed to lead the team of four other judges in the upcoming trial. The court had clearly acknowledged the significance of the case by assigning the highest number of judges to preside over it.

  Bruno Jost flew to Berlin to meet with the judges and determine the schedule and protocol for the trial. They agreed the court would convene every Thursday and Friday of every week. There would be two other judges on reserve to cover the absence of any of the main judges and two teams of interpreters to assist the Arab- and Persian-speaking witnesses. The meeting was mostly spent reviewing the indictment, without a mention of its historic significance. It was the first time since World War II that a German court would consider the crimes of a foreign government. Jost came away confident of the judges’ regard for the quality of his work. None of them had questioned the validity of his premise. There and then, they established the cordial distance that would define the relationship between the prosecutor and the court, especially Judge Kubsch.

  In Karlsruhe, at the headquarters of the chief federal prosecutor, a happy uproar swept through the staff at the prospect of the imminent trial. The triumph owed much to the backbone of Alexander von Stahl. But by releasing the indictment, he had violated too many allegiances. Pressure from every corner was heaped on him. A minor shooting incident in a remote part of Germany was turned into a national scandal that dogged him until July, when the minister of justice asked for his resignation. Only two months after he had signed the indictment, Alexander von Stahl was forced to leave his post, ending his promising career in government.

  Years later, in a calmer and more forgiving state, Norbert reflected on the events of spring 1993. From the distance of years, Parviz’s betrayal revealed a wisdom he had been too furious to recognize at the time, and the chief federal prosecutor, whom he and others had accused of standing in the way of the truth, proved to have been a captive of even greater powers. He wrote:

  With the arrest of the two Lebanese accomplices in September 1992, and that of the Iranian coordinator of the assassinations, Kazem Darabi, in early October, the investigators should have put to rest all other suspicions about the PKK or rival opposition groups. Still, the federal prosecutor never issued any statements about Tehran having turned into the lead suspect and refused to release any information that so much as alluded to it. In fact, eight months later, when a wealth of other evidence clearly pointed to Iran, the spokesperson for the office of the chief federal prosecutor said in a radio interview, “I can only discuss facts and our findings, not fantasize. We still believe the PKK or the opposition could have been behind this.” Until May 1993, the federal prosecutor had not officially taken a different position. But on May 11, 1993, as a result of a piece of misinformation planted in the journal Bild by a member of the Iranian opposition, the chief federal prosecutor finally came forward. That bit of misinformation, purposely designed to force the investigators’ hands, worked brilliantly. In a statement released that same day, after many months, the federal prosecutor finally spoke of the true origins of the weapons. A week later, he released the indictment. As it turned out, the federal prosecutor, too, had to break free of others who had been pressuring him all along. But at last, the long reign of silence ended.

  12

  When Ayatollah Khomeini was told that Salman Rushdie might undergo plastic surgery to change his appearance, he ordered, “Kill anyone who doesn’t look like Rushdie!”

  —Hadi Khorsandi, exiled Iranian satirist

  The federal prosecuto
r brought his charge against Iran in May 1993. But the magazine Die Focus had made the same accusations in its inaugural issue the previous January. The chief federal prosecutor could not be sued, but the magazine was vulnerable. Iran’s embassy in Bonn sued Die Focus and its reporter Josef Hufelschulte, on charges of slander, for an estimated 500,000 DM. Though the lower court dismissed the case, the embassy appealed the decision. For a second time, the reporter appeared before the judge to defend his piece. Like all good reporters, he refused to reveal his source and agreed to present his evidence to the judge only in a closed session.

  The evidence was the final summary of the work of the federal commission on Mykonos. Shortly after the federal prosecutor took over the case, the commission—a body made up of Parliamentarians and representatives from all the agencies involved in the investigation—was appointed to monitor Jost’s work and review his findings. It was a watch-dog group that was established early on to minimize the damaging fallout from a politically charged investigation. After several weeks, the Mykonos Commission concluded its work by issuing a summary, which was captured in a single line, “powerful figures within Iran’s regime ordered the assassinations at the Mykonos restaurant.”

  Since the commission’s findings, like the indictment, had been kept from the public, one frustrated member had leaked a copy of it to Hufelschulte. That was what the reporter presented to the judge who, after reviewing it, told him to go home. Case dismissed!

  The embassy did not relent. It insisted upon its innocence by extending an exclusive invitation to the reporter to spend a few hours with the ambassador and his staff in Bonn. The embassy also offered him a visa to visit Iran for himself, but Hufelschulte traveled only as far as Bonn. He had tea at the embassy, which was rumored to be the hub of Iran’s intelligence activities in Western Europe. The reception left him with an even greater distaste for the officials he had so scathingly accused. Prior to the lawsuits and the encounter in Bonn, Hufelschulte was only intrigued by the Mykonos case. Afterward, his interest became a devotion, one that would inevitably lead to Parviz.