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Sunday, 22 January 2006 |
 Saeed Emami (a.k.a. Saeed Eslami or Shamshiri) was born in
Shiraz, central Iran, as Daniyal Ghavami in an Iranian Jewish family.
He spent several years in the United States pursuing his studies in
Mechanical Engineering. After completing his higher education, he
worked at the Iranian Interests Section in the Pakistan Embassy in
Washington, D.C. for one year and at Iran's mission to the United
Nations for another year. At that time he was recruited by Iranian
intelligence and after his return to Iran he went directly to the
Ministry of Intelligence.
When Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri was serving as the Minister of
Intelligence, Saeed Hajjarian, the Director General of the Intelligence
Ministry voiced opposition to the appointment of Saeed Emami to key
posts at the ministry because of his family records.
But in 1989, Ali
Fallahian replaced Reyshahri as Minister of Intelligence and appointed
Saeed Emami as his deputy for security affairs immediately after
assuming his post.
He remained unknown to the public until the fall of 1998, when it was
declared that Dariush Forouhar and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari
Forouhar, leaders of Mellat Iran, an Iranian opposition party, were
found dead at their house in southern Tehran. Several weeks later, the
Ministry of Intelligence officially declared that their deaths were
murders and that rogue members of the intelligence ministry were
responsible and had acted without the approval of the then-minister,
Ghorban Ali Dorri-Najafabadi.
According to the general military prosecuter, Emami was the primary
leading figure in these political killings. In spring 1998, military
prosecuter Niazi declared that Emami had committed suicide in prison
using a brand of strong hair removal powder containing arsenic. The
bizarre account of Emami’s death in prison while under round-the-clock
supervision convinced no one and it was widely assumed that he was
murdered in order to prevent the leak of sensitive information about
MOIS operations, which would have compromised the entire leadership of
the Islamic Republic.
In late 1999, the press revealed that Emami was directly responsible
for the “Serial Murders” in the 1980s and 1990s including: Saidi
Sirjani's mysterious death, the Mykonos restaurant assassination
scandal, an unsuccessful attempt to drive the bus of 21 Iranian
journalists off a precipice on their way to Armenia, the unexpected
death of Ahmad Khomeini (Khomeini's son), the murders of Mohammad
Jaafar Pooyandeh, Mohammad Mokhtari, Peerooz Davani, and Majid Sharif.
Later on, a videotape of his speech at the University of Hamadan was
published in which Emami enthusiastically promotes his Islamist
perspective on social issues. Later, during the amendment of the Press
Law by the 5th Majlis, Emami was called the designer of the draft law
by Salam newspaper, for which Salam was banned by the Tehran prosecuter
and this finally resulted in the 1999 student demonstrations in Tehran.
In his revelations, Jamshid Tafrishi, a former MOIS defector, who defected after ten years wrote:
“…I met Saeed Emami (a.k.a Shamshiri), the number two man in the
Intelligence Ministry for eight years, who was behind the murder of at
least 100 dissidents in Iran. The latest of these serial killings was
exposed in November 1998, when Dariush Forouhar and his wife Parvaneh
were brutally murdered in their home in Tehran. Emami was also
responsible for the assassination of dozens of dissidents abroad. I
also met Mostafa Kazemi (a.k.a Sanjari, Emami's deputy), Amir Hossein
Taqavi (responsible for counter-PMOI operations in the Intelligence
Ministry) and Hossein Shariatmadari (a Revolutionary Guards brigadier
and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative at the
government-owned Kayhan newspaper). My contact with the Ministry was a
man by the name of Reza who was an assistant to Saeed Emami. It was
revealed later that his name was Morteza Qobbeh. He was Emami's deputy
and had the task of recruiting those who had left the Mojahedin
Organization.”
A videotape showing Emami’s wife under torture by Iranian intelligence
agents was brought to public attention by the Iranian resistance in
recent years.
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