Assassins of the Turquoise Palace

by Hakakian, Roya

  Once everyone had settled into their seats, the chief judge set the routine he would follow at the start of each session. He leaned into his microphone and announced, “Today we begin hearings on case number 2StE2/93.”

  Then he looked to his right where Bruno Jost and his deputy sat, dressed in their crimson robes. He acknowledged Jost.

  “The prosecution is present.”

  Then he took stock of the defendants in the glass cages and added, “The defendants are present.”

  Next, he turned to the team of lawyers for the accused.

  “The counsels are here.”

  And lastly, he nodded to the court translators stationed at the foot of his bench, and reminded them, “The interpreters are also present and abide by their oath to translate accurately and truthfully.”

  Shohreh sat beside Ehrig. Across from her, clad in black robes, were twelve attorneys representing the accused. The more animated and flamboyant of the accused, Yousef and two other accomplices, were quarantined in one glass cage against the wall she faced. Behind her, Darabi and Rhayel sat in another glass cage. At the far end of the hall, beyond a wooden parapet, several rows of benches were allocated to reporters and spectators. The small balcony above them, once used by the kaiser when he dropped in to observe a trial, had been cordoned off.

  On that first day, the audience section was filled to capacity. Seventy viewers, friend and foe—Iranians who knew the dead seated alongside the Lebanese relatives of the accused. For the Iranians, the trial was a bittersweet occasion of both shame and relief. On display before the public’s eye was the ordeal that had driven them into exile. There was shame in all that had emerged, but the attention was anodyne. They had not come expecting to win or lose. They had not come expecting anything. Being in that room, their long-standing suffering was receiving its due. Being there, alone, vindicated them, lifted and uplifted them. They had come not knowing what the next day would bring. For all they knew, the first day could be the last. That such a day had come at all was what mattered to them.

  The opening day the attorneys for the defense steered the course of the proceedings. They entered a series of motions asking to postpone the trial. They claimed not to have had enough time to fully study the case. They accused the prosecution of not having surrendered all the evidence. They argued that the trial had been founded on faulty charges made in a misguided indictment. Quoting “the most knowledgeable man in the republic,” they repeated the words of Bernd Schmidbauer: “Those who know the facts would draw vastly different conclusions.”

  The trial could not begin, these attorneys argued, until the court had heard from Bernd Schmidbauer. The judges granted the defense’s demand by issuing a subpoena for Germany’s chief of intelligence. But the trial would not stop for a single witness. The court resumed and then again yielded to new motions. Each time Judge Kubsch called for a recess, the five judges rose, their black chairs swiveling in their wake, and marched to their spartan chamber to consult. What lessened the day’s boredom for the audience, on whom the legal details in debate were lost, were the intermittent howls of Yousef complaining of a toothache. Finally, Chief Judge Kubsch adjourned to allow Yousef to go to the infirmary. So ended the lackluster day that had begun with so much promise.

  The interruptions continued into the second day. Each time the chief judge called on Jost to recite his indictment, the attorneys for the accused entered yet another motion to delay the opening. Once, even Jost himself refused to begin.

  From his corner of the courtroom, the prosecutor had spotted Parviz, one of his key witnesses, in the audience, whose presence prior to testifying would have compromised him as a witness. Jost told the judge that he could not begin with a certain spectator inside the courtroom. Before the judge asked the person’s name, Parviz walked out.

  By the afternoon, Judge Kubsch’s supply of patience had dried up. In his mild yet firm manner, he rejected all other motions. He called on Jost to begin. When the prosecutor finally finished reciting the indictment, the trial had truly begun.

  The first witness debuted just as he had last promised. “Everything I’ve said so far has been a lie, but today I’m going to tell the truth,” Yousef Amin bellowed from the witness stand, then, addressing Judge Kubsch he added, “I’ve been saving it for you, Judge.”

  He pointed to the bulletproof glass cage where Rhayel and Darabi sat and shouted as the voices of the translators trailed his, “Those are not the real killers. The real killers are a team of Iraqi Kurds still out there, on the loose.”

  When the judges asked why he had lied before, Yousef blamed the investigators.

  “They tried to trick me. You’d think I was an ambassador the way they were treating me at first. They gave me money, put me up in a hotel, and promised me stuff,” then, turning dramatically toward his old friends, he continued, “If only I named the good men over there.”

  That afternoon, the witness told a story far more amusing than deft. He was the hero of his own legend, a victim of cunning interrogators. He had resisted valiantly until they were driven to rage. After losing any hope of his surrender, the mask had fallen from their evil faces and they had begun abusing him. What blame still remained, he placed at the feet of his translators, who did not have proper mastery of either Arabic or the particular dialect he spoke, or they were merely spies.

  “Spies, you say, Mr. Amin?” one judge asked.

  “Yes! Two hundred percent spies, Judge. With ID cards and everything. I saw their badges with my own eyes,” he replied.

  On the second day of his testimony, Yousef took the drama to new heights. Returning to the stand, he accused his attorney of both incompetence and spying for several Western intelligence services at once. If the contradiction in his claim was obvious to Yousef, he showed no sign of it. He refused to speak as long as his attorney remained in the room.

  Yousef’s chief counsel resigned immediately. But unlike several others who would be hired and fired by the defendants throughout the trial, he did not simply quit. He summed up his knowledge of Yousef and his own predicament in a brief statement that he delivered before a group of reporters.

  I fear the words I am about to speak would further confirm Mr. Amin’s distrust in me, yet I am compelled to speak them. I cannot allow criminals to rob me of my humanity by preventing me from doing what’s right, no matter the price. Now that I no longer represent Yousef Amin, I can give my true assessment of him and the bind in which he finds himself. Mr. Amin is a pawn in the hands of Iran’s fanatical regime which, even in prison and courtroom, keeps its firm grip on him. I know that I am breaking my client’s confidence by speaking so, but my greater duty is to the truth.

  Respectfully,

  Luther Bunegart

  A new counsel was quickly assigned to Yousef, but Yousef’s conduct did not change. His judges seemed to be sitting not at the bench, but in a bulletproof cage across from his own. The charge he most earnestly repudiated was not murdering four men but collaborating with the investigators. After five days of testimony, when it became clear that he could not undo his earlier confessions, he gloomily returned to his seat.

  Darabi and Rhayel took the stand next, but they refused to answer any questions and were dismissed within minutes.

  “Can they get away with this?” Shohreh whispered to Ehrig, who assented with a nod. The less the accused spoke, the more terrified she grew. She felt besieged from every corner. To her left and right were the attorneys she hardly knew. Behind her and before her, men whom she feared and loathed perched in two glass cages. She saw their silence as a sign of their power and became ever more certain that something would soon end the trial, perhaps a deal, perhaps a bomb. She diligently recorded the details of the proceedings, as if her notes were all that were to remain of the trial. Her hand was busy throughout the day, running across the pages of her pad, hardly leaving any margins for the occasional exclamation and question marks—the rare signs of her own reflections. In the moments of quiet, during t
he recesses, she found time to interject a line or two in parentheses, a commentary summed up in an expletive. She remained faithful to the exchanges, meticulously punctuating her sentences, noting the times of the testimonies down to the minute, peeking over the translators’ shoulders to check for the spelling of unfamiliar names. Unlike the judges, she was not keeping these notes for some future deliberation. All she wanted was to know the details of her husband’s death. She wanted to bear his history, the way she had once borne his progeny.

  In the midst of writing one day, she heard the chief judge call her name. She lifted her head, bewildered. Ehrig leaned into her and said, “It’s your turn.”

  Her moment to testify had come and, though she had long known that it would, the reality startled her just the same.

  “Me? But . . . what will I say? I’m not ready,” she whispered, anxiety rising in her.

  “Just answer the questions. That’s all you need to do,” he murmured, tugging gently at her arm to lift her along as he stood.

  On the stand, she did her best to be a good witness. She kept to the facts, as the lawyers had advised. At times, she shut her eyes to concentrate on the details of the memories she was asked to revisit. She did not cry, even when the questions summoned gasps of sympathy from the audience.

  “What did your husband say before leaving that night?”

  She had paused to hold back tears and answered without breaking.

  “Your honor, he said not to wash the dishes because he was going to do them when he returned.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Then he kissed me and said, ‘See you shortly, little lady.’”

  She had done well until then but, shifting in her seat, she caught a glance of Darabi on whose lips she detected a smirk. In an instant, the smirk undid her composure. She turned deaf. Her fury was reignited and the room blurred. She saw no one but the man with the hooked nose, balding head, stubbly beard, and deep-set eyes, grinning triumphantly.

  She faced Darabi and began addressing him as if they had been in conversation all their lives.

  “I’ll get you, Mr. Darabi. You may think you’re a Muslim, but you’re nothing but a disgrace to our religion. I’ll show you I’m the better Muslim. I’ll fight you and your bosses for as long as I breathe. I—”

  Judge Kubsch interrupted her.

  “You can’t speak this way in this courtroom, Mrs. Dehkordi! No one’s guilt or innocence has yet been proven. You may step down!”

  Shohreh was shaken, above all, by the judge’s austere tone. Who was this caped man who did not bow to her venerable grief, and commanded her so? She pursed her lips lest the thought slip through them. Her attorneys had told her to trust the judge. Kubsch was a veteran who had presided over some of the toughest cases of political crime in recent years. When the former heads of East Germany appeared before him on charges of treason, Judge Kubsch had, after weeks of deliberation, declared the trial altogether unconstitutional. The decision caused a sensation, prompting a nationwide debate. The case was referred to the Constitutional Court, and was upheld—setting a precedence. A victory so great would have inflated most egos. But he had celebrated the landmark event by returning to the bench the next day.

  Other survivors took to the stand and felt similarly unsettled. For Mehdi, the feeling set in when Judge Kubsch’s deputy asked, “Here, in the transcripts of your statement to the police on the night of September 17th, you say the killers were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Do you have any evidence the court hasn’t seen?”

  “I say this based on years of observation. I’ve no doubt the regime is behind this. The Guards or the intelligence ministry or both carried it out.”

  Judge Kubsch interjected. “Let me remind you that this is a court of law. We’re not interested in your political analysis. Please state what facts or evidence you have to back your claim.”

  Modesty kept Mehdi from saying that he was an accomplished engineer and a beloved athlete. He simply said, “You see, I’ve no other enemies. There’s no one else who wants to kill me.”

  “And do you have any evidence to prove the Iranian regime wants to kill you? If you don’t, please don’t speculate.”

  To ask Mehdi to document so obvious a presence as the inescapable menace that had forced him into exile and haunted him still was to ask that he show the air he breathed. He was offended, but silenced, too. That was the trouble all the exiles would face on the witness stand—how to carve out something tangible from the indurate, misshapen heap of their thirteen years of suffering for those who did not know their experiences.

  The scrutiny felt equally harsh to Parviz when his turn came, as if only his errors were the subject of inquiry.

  “A few months ago you went to the BKA headquarters in Meckenheim and identified Yousef Amin as the lead shooter at the restaurant that night. How could you say with confi dence that Mr. Amin was the man who had shot at your party?”

  “Whatever Yousef Amin was doing and wherever he may have been, inside or outside, he was carrying out Tehran’s orders,” he responded stubbornly.

  “This you also say with confidence. Could you tell the court why you are so confident?”

  “We in the Iranian opposition have been hounded by the regime for so long that we sense things in a way that’s impossible to put into words.”

  The judge, clearly not convinced, watched Parviz silently for a few moments.

  Parviz tried again. “Because many Iranians in the diaspora have been murdered, and whenever a case was properly investigated, Tehran was implicated. Very simple! Take the 1989 murder in Vienna . . .”

  The judge raised his hand and stopped him in midsentence to put an entirely different question to him. “In your opinion, how did the killers know about the meeting on Thursday?”

  “I think they had a mole.”

  “Do you think this, or know this?”

  “I think this. I don’t have any evidence.”

  “You said earlier that the killers were near the restaurant at nine-thirty. How do you know that?”

  “From the police reports that have been in the papers.”

  “Have you read all the police’s findings?”

  “What’s been printed, yes. The rest, no, although heaven knows it’s not for lack of trying.”

  Suddenly, Yousef stood up and shouted, “What I want to know is how my pictures have ended up in your hands. That’s what I want to know. The police are leaking my pictures. I’m sure of it.”

  Parviz welcomed the break. He raised his arms, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “You ought to ask Allah how that might have happened.”

  A long day of grueling testimony was about to end and the judge still had many questions for the witness. He told Parviz to return the next day.

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Parviz said, surprising the court.

  Judge Kubsch frowned and asked why. Parviz reluctantly explained, “Because my daughter needs me, your honor.”

  The previous morning, he had heard a loud thud from Salomeh’s bedroom. She had fainted yet again. Her pulse had dropped. He had rushed her to the clinic, and the cardiologist had finally ordered a pacemaker to be implanted in her.

  “She’s probably having heart surgery tomorrow. I must be at her side,” Parviz continued.

  “Don’t you have anyone else who could accompany her in your place?” the chief judge pressed without a hint of emotion.

  “Sure I do. I’ve got a dozen people who could be with her. But as her father, I want to be with her,” Parviz ended, clearly discomfited by having to speak publicly about so private a matter.

  The room fell silent. After a pause, Judge Kubsch said, “In that case, please call me tonight after you find out if the surgery is on or not for tomorrow. If it isn’t, I’d like you to be here tomorrow.”

  Parviz called the judge at home that evening. The surgery had been postponed and he could return for another day of testimony. In the absence of microphones and the decorum of t
he courtroom, Judge Kubsch’s voice sounded soft through the receiver.

  “How did the visit to the doctor go? Is your daughter better?”

  For a few moments, the business of the trial pressed on neither of them, as they talked one man to the other, father to father. Parviz’s refusal had been unfathomable to the judge. For years Mrs. Kubsch had been asking her husband to take a few days off for a family vacation, but each time he told her there would be plenty of time for vacations in his retirement. His work was treated as sacred by the household. His son and daughter walked gingerly if they found him at his desk inside his study. Only when they had trouble with their studies of Latin or Greek would their father would attend to them. For all other subjects or troubles he entrusted matters to his wife, who had dedicated herself to the three Ks: Kinder, Kirche, and Kuche—or children, church, and kitchen. He performed the duty that was also his passion. It was what he expected everyone to do, before Parviz refused him.

  The conversation, warm and thoughtful, endeared the judge to Parviz, though he, sworn to skepticism, would not acknowledge his thawing apprehension toward Kubsch to anyone, not even to himself. He was still at war and could not chance dismantling the barricades within.

  In the remaining weeks of 1993, Noori’s friends who had frequented the restaurant took the stand.

  “Do you wish to take the religious or the secular oath?” Judge Kubsch asked the witnesses, who usually chose the secular oath, since their foes, the defendants, had sworn to God.

  “I swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.”

  They came expecting to win the court’s sympathy, certain that their testimony would deliver a blow to the accused. Instead, they found themselves sternly examined. The judges no longer asked who they thought was behind the killings. They surprised the court by raising a subject the witnesses had hoped to have buried with the corpses of the dead. The two names the expatriates dreaded rang in the chief judge’s microphone. “Have you heard the names Nejati and Sedighi?”