Bijan Jazani - Arrest and Prison Life

Arrest and Prison Life

In early 1968, the activities of the organization had reached a stalemate mainly due to lack of funds. The group decided to gain the required money from robbing banks. Their first attempt at this was to be on January 12, 1968, but three days prior to that date Aghayan notified the SAVAK of the groups plans. This led to the arrest of Jazani and Sourky and hiding of other members of the organization. The arrest of Shahrzad, whose location was notified to the Savak by Aghayan, led to the arrests of Izadi, Rashidi, Ahsan, Farokh Negahdar and others. In addition five other members of the group (Zarifi, Jaleel Afshar, Choopan Zadeh, Saeed Kalantari Nazari, and Keyanzad) were arrested by the SAVAK with the assistance of Abbas-Ali Shahryari and his organization.

Even though the central members of the organization had been arrested the group did not dismantle. Safaii Farahani and Safari Ashtiani left Iran and joined Palestinian organization Fatah. Other less known members reorganized the group and renamed it to Iranian People's Fadaee Guerrillas (چريك فداييان خلق ايران). After returning to Iran Farahani and Safari organized the Siahkal (سياهکل) uprising on February 8, 1971.

On February 1969, Jazani's group was indicted under military court. Jazani was sentenced to prison for life for participation in an organization against the monarchy and carrying an illegal weapon, which was later reduced to 15 years. The sentences for other members varied, ranging from 2 to 10 years. The groups members were located at Gasr prison until spring of 1969, when Saeed Kalantari Nazari, Sourky, Sarmady, and Choopan Zadeh attempted to escape from prison. This led to the relocation of the majority of the group members to rural areas. Jazani was sent to Qom with ordinary prisoners. Because of the respect of the prison guards towards Jazani, he was allowed to spend most of his time in the prison library studying and painting.

In this period, Jazani with the assistance of his wife gets in contact with the unknown members of the group and guides them in an ideological sense. In the summer of 1970 he writes "What a revolutionary must know" and signs it in the name of Safaii Farahani to help Safaii strengthen his position in the group. When Siahkal occurred, through interrogation of the participants by SAVAK, they find out about the relationship of Jazani and the group. In March 1971, SAVAK brings Jazani to Tehran. From that time on, Jazani remains in Tehran and was located in between other political prisoners. In Tehran, he increases his activities in prison. Jazani had the opinion that prison is a piece of the activity outside and therefore must reflect the policies of the group. In this thought, he introduced three things to active political participants in prison: first, standing strong and holding ones place; second, contact with outside; and third development of an organization inside prison. Jazani lived his life in prison based on this. With the help of his wife and other prisoners he developed contact with the Iranian People's Fadaee Guerrillas outside of prison and created a leftist movement inside prison. This responsibility of this movement was to organize resistance, manage activities, and teaching a political and ideological to leftist prisoners and recruitment for Iranian People's Fadaee Guerrillas. The activity of Jazani caused problems from two sides in prison. The officials of SAVAK who thought of Jazani as a major problem in prison attempted to stop him from his activities. On the other side, leftist prisoners who disagreed with Jazani acted in various ways against Jazani's activities. SAVAK also created problems between these leftist factions.

The majority of those against Jazani, were the followers of Masoud Ahmadzadeh and Amir Parviz Pooyan, two of the founders of Iranian People's Fadaee Guerrillas. Although these two individuals were killed in 1972, their teachings were the official teachings of the movement up to 1976. Jazani thought these two individuals teachings were distractive and his book "Armed struggle in Iran: The road to mobilization of the masses" was written in response to a book written by Ahmadzadeh "Guerilla fight both tactic and strategic". Even though Jazani did not mention Parviz Pooyan or Ahmadzadeh in his book; when discussing and offering his thoughts he disapproves those offered by these two individuals. Even though there were major differences between the teachings of Jazani and Ahmadzadeh. There were two focal items that were discussed between these two schools of thoughts. These were that the revolutionary situation of the country and the method of struggle. The ones that disagreed with Jazani and approved Ahmadzadeh were under the belief that the country is in a revolutionary status and situations for a revolution exists. Therefore a guerrilla fighter must fight with artillery to make the people aware of the revolutionary status of the country. A smaller motor, military uprising will turn a larger motor, the population; and the larger population will support the military uprising and bring down the Shah's government. In Ahmadzadeh's opinion, not believing the revolutionary situation shows a sense of individualism, which in the opinion of the leftist movement is that of a traitor.

Jazani would explain that a revolutionary status does not exist in the country and in addition to that a revolution is not developed from a military uprising but a development of a political, social, economical, and ideological process. A military uprising should be performed at the same time and not before the beginning of a revolution and by itself can not cause a revolution. In his opinion, those who are for a military uprising are similar to the Shah who is blocking a peaceful means of struggle. Because of this without talking about Ahmadzadeh, Jazani writes "When we hear that revolution begins with a military uprising, we have to say that the believers of this train of thought do not know two things: one the current situation of military uprising and second revolution in general and the revolution we want is a specific one."

The second major problem was the method of struggle. Ahmadzadeh believed that the only means of battle is a military one and had a strategic role in their fight. Jazani believed in the current situation one should not limit their means to one method but we should prepare the people in a political sense from all sides. With this effort one can fight against injustice and dictatorship for a better life for all people. This will first fix the problem with communication between people and second the social injustices develop a populous sense against the Shah in Iran and the world, and a dictator regime would fall.

Even though Jazani attempted to resolve issues through dialogue and unite the various leftist factions, his opponents dismantled the leftist movement in prison to decrease Jazani's influence. Even so, Jazani remained active to the end of his life when he was murdered alongside 8 other prisoners on April 19, 1975, by Savak. Bahman Naderipour, a SAVAK agent and closely involved with the executions, described that day's events:

We took the prisoners to the high hills above Evin. They were blind-folded and their hands were tied. We got them off the minibus and had them sit on the ground. Then, Attarpour told them that, just as your friends have killed our comrades, we have decided to execute you—the brain behind those executions. Jazani and the others began protesting. I do not know whether it was Attarpour or Colonel Vaziri who first pulled out a machine gun and started shooting them. I do not remember whether I was the 4th or 5th person to whom they gave the machine gun. I had never done that before. At the end, Sa'di Jalil Esfahani shot them in their heads .

There are strong reasons to believe that Naderipour may have been subjected to severe torture after being detained by the revolutionary government, therefore the details of his narrative, which was obtained under duress, is questionable by all standards. The circumstance of Bijan Jazani's death will remain a mystery. The only truth that remains is that he was killed / executed because he was deemed as a terrorist. Jazani was found guilty for planning the assassination of Iranian officials, U.S. advisor's on assignment in Iran and simple peasants at Siahkal.

All of Jazani's books were written in prison from 1970 to 1974. They discussed the establishment of the independent leftist movement in the two decades of the 1960s and 70s. Jazani is buried in the 38th block of Behesht-e Zahra cemetery.