Hassan Zia-Zarifi - The Death Penalty, International Pressure, and Extrajudicial Execution

The Death Penalty, International Pressure, and Extrajudicial Execution

Although he was in prison, Hassan Zia-Zarifi was put on a new trial, along with the survivors of the Siahkal attack and other members of the OIPFG. In Khordad 1350 (May 1971) Zia-Zarifi faced another military tribunal and this time the prosecution successfully called for the death penalty, a verdict upheld on appeal.

The verdict aroused immediate international furor, especially because Zia-Zarifi was already imprisoned at the time of the Siahkal incident and the case against him rested almost entirely on supposed confessions extracted under torture. Zia-Zarifi himself took advantage of the forum presented by the trial to denounce the severe torture he had endured, including being whipped, electrocuted, subjected to extended hunger, and deprived of necessary medical attention.

Bowing to international public pressure, the Shah commuted Zia-Zarifi’s sentence to life in prison with hard labor. But this did not decrease the harshness of Zia-Zarifi’s treatment. Facing a rapidly growing militancy, the Shah gave SAVAK free rein to extract a public apology and confession from the prisoners, particularly Zia-Zarifi and Jazani, viewed as the movement’s ideological founders.

Hassan was held in Kerman prison, along with ordinary criminal convicts, some of whom were goaded by prison guards to continually harass Zia-Zarifi. Nevertheless, Zia-Zarifi continued his legal efforts on behalf of other prisoners. He was subject to unceasing torture and interrogation during this period.

By 1974, the OIPFG under the leadership of Hamid Ashraf had solidified its organization and embarked on a campaign of assassinating senior government officials who had been directly implicated in the detention and torture of government critics. After the OIPFG assassinated General Zia Farsiu, the Chief Military Prosecutor, SAVAK again brought Zia-Zarifi to the notorious Komite prison in Tehran, where he suffered through severe torture again purely as a punitive measure. SAVAK was frustrated that Zia-Zarifi would not agree to cooperate with the government and seemed able to continue his political work even from inside a prison cell. In early 1975, SAVAK again removed Zia-Zarifi, this time to Evin prison where he was under the immediate scrutiny of SAVAK’s interrogators.

On April 18, 1975, the government announced that Zia-Zarifi and 8 other prisoners including Jazani had been killed while trying to escape from prison, along with eight others (including Jazani). Zia-Zarifi was 36 years old at the time. The story of the prisoners’ escape met with immediate skepticism, as the prisoners were in no physical shape for such an attempt.

After the 1979 revolution, a notorious SAVAK agent, Bahman Naderipour, known by his alias of Tehrani, provided an admission during his trial about the circumstances of the death of Zia-Zarifi and others. According to Naderipour, the prisoners’ execution was conceived as revenge for the assassination of military officials. On April 18, SAVAK agents gathered the prisoners from Evin prison and put them on a bus, blindfolded and handcuffed. They were taken to the hills bordering Evil prison. The prisoners were forced off the bus and ordered to sit on the ground. One agent declared that the prisoners would be killed in retaliation for the death of government agents. Jazani and some of the other prisoners protested loudly. The prisoners were shot at close range by Uzi submachine guns, followed by a pistol shot to the head.

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 Hassan Zia-Zarifi’s death will remain a mystery. The only truth that remains is that he was killed / executed because he was deemed as a terrorist. Zia-Zarifi was found guilty in a court of law for planning the assassination of Iranian officials, U.S. advisor’s on assignment in Iran and simple peasants at Siahkal.

International human rights groups and the Confederation of Iranian Students studying abroad vehemently criticized the Shah’s government. The execution cemented the regime’s international reputation as an abusive, illegitimate government. Less than two years later, with the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the U.S. also began pressuring the government to improve its human rights record. By then, the public movement that culminated in the revolution of 1979 had begun and the Shah’s end was in sight.