Assassins of the Turquoise Palace

by Hakakian, Roya

  The innocent lovesick impression of the line lifted instantly when Jost learned that Navab Safavi had been the founder of Iran’s Islamic Brotherhood, the group responsible for several assassinations in the 1950s.

  To call Fallahian a counterpart of Schmidbauer or other European intelligence chiefs was not wrong but it was misleading. In the early years after the 1979 revolution, he had been the Ayatollah’s Proteus and had morphed into whatever his master had needed.

  His career reached its climax after he left his post as the head of housing and sewage and became special prosecutor. In his appointment letter, the Ayatollah wrote, “Because your honor is familiar with the work of the counterrevolutionaries in every mask and every disguise, it is only fitting to put you in charge so that with the exercise of Islamic law you give evil its due.”

  And due he gave, on numerous occasions, one of which was an assault against an opposition stronghold, where he destroyed forty of their homes within twenty-four hours.

  Noon had almost arrived. Jost put on his coat and prepared to leave. In his office Tony von Trek began to do the same. He put on his holster. It was all that appeared forbidding about the lanky and mild-mannered commissioner. In the pocket of his trench coat, he kept a pair of handcuffs. There had been no calls from his superior thus far, and so without objection from above he saw no obstacles to prevent the controversial arrest. But the phone rang. Bonn vehemently objected to his plan. The minister, after all, was a guest of the state.

  Ali Fallahian slipped Jost’s grasp, but his visit did not remain a secret. Hufelschulte’s call upset the peace at the chancellery, where the efforts to contain the news were quickly replaced with ones to control its damage. By that afternoon, Bernd Schmidbauer was forced to hold a news conference. Every reporter posed a variation of the same question—the subject of the discussion with Fallahian. Flashing a politician’s insincere smile, Schmidbauer said the meeting had a “purely humanitarian nature.”

  Asked if he thought Tehran had been the culprit behind the killings as the federal prosecutor alleged, he dismissed the allegation, saying “Those who know the facts would draw vastly different conclusions.”

  Public opinion quickly turned against Schmidbauer for having accepted the visitors in the first place, though it would be months before the damning evidence would emerge. The press, dubbing him “Minister 008,” mocked him for his clumsiness, for being the secret service chief who had failed to keep a simple visit secret. In 1992, the pained countenance of the survivors had compelled journalists to write about the case. By 1993, what compelled them was the look of duplicity on the faces of their own politicians. Schmidbauer had been a champion of the Critical Dialogue with Iran, and the German public, who well knew the burdens of a guilty national conscience, began to question both him and the enterprise. The trial was increasingly becoming a test of the nation’s integrity, and the headlines reflected it.

  The Mykonos Trial Is a Trial of Germany’s Justice System.

  Is Our Judiciary Truly Independent?

  Are German Laws and Judges for Sale?

  The domestic uproar inspired international criticism, including American and British demands for an investigation. Fellow journalists throughout Europe, buoyed by their German colleagues, began to revisit the “unsolved murders” of several other Iranian exiles across the continent. By late October of 1993, even New Yorkers were following the news of the minister’s “secret” visit in their daily papers.

  Mr. Fallahian and Mr. Schmidbauer may have discussed a deal under which the accused killers now on trial in Berlin would be freed or given lenient treatment. In exchange, the Iranians were said to have offered to free several Germans being held in Iran. Some accounts said Mr. Fallahian had also raised the possibility of releasing Ron Arad, an Israeli Air Force navigator believed to be held by pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon, and lifting the death sentence issued by Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini and confirmed by the present Iranian Government against the novelist Salman Rushdie . . .

  On Hans Joachim Ehrig’s desk, the pink stack of “While You Were Away” slips was piled high. The victims’ lead attorney was already consumed by the trial although it had not yet begun. Nothing in Ehrig’s lawyerly conduct or the nearly industrial appearance of his office betrayed the romantic beneath. Only those who had known him as an idealistic university student in the 1960s could see that with Mykonos, Ehrig had found the kind of case that had lured him into law in the first place.

  For the reporters who had inundated him with requests, he struck a cool pose, which made his fierce statements all the more compelling: “This visit is a slap in the face of the investigators. It sullies Germany’s reputation in the eyes of the world,” he told a reporter at a press conference one day after the news of the secret visit broke. “It appears as if economic interests with Iran overshadow all other concerns against our own ethical values.”

  “How should Bonn have reacted?”

  The few sentences Ehrig offered were not only poignant. They were also visionary. In them, he concisely summarized the past and the potential future mistakes that those involved with the case could be prone to make, and more. He also charted his own expectation for the course of the trial and beyond.

  “Arresting Fallahian would have been too much to hope for, but pressuring him was not. Bonn should not have accepted the visit. If this indeed proves to be a government-sanctioned killing, all diplomatic ties must be cut off. I hope everyone working on this case can remain independent and not allow the voice of the higher masters to echo in their heads. If this trial moves forward the way it should, it can prevent other such assassinations from taking place.”

  To the chorus of criticism, the exiles added their voices in the way they knew best. They issued a flyer calling for a demonstration and posted it on the entrance of their businesses in Berlin—cafés, grocery stores, restaurants, and travel agencies. Its tone captured the tenor of a people searching for a voice.

  A CALL TO ALL

  Fellow Free-Thinking Iranians!

  More than a year since the four opposition members were murdered at the Mykonos restaurant by the elements of the regime, the accused will finally stand trial at 9 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, October 28, 1993. In light of certain recent visits, it is incumbent upon us to condemn the efforts of some German politicians who, directly or indirectly, wish to influence the outcome. There will be a protest march in front of the courthouse where the trial will be held.

  Warning: According to the office of the chief federal prosecutor’s instructions, anyone wishing to attend the trial must present a valid ID or passport.

  Organized by: The Organization in Defense of Refugees

  Place: Northern corner of Turm between Rathenauer and Wilsnaker, reachable by UBahn #9: Turm Street stop

  Starting time: 8:00 a.m. on October 28, 1993

  That morning, Shohreh’s thirteen-month lethargy lifted. She awoke to find herself looking ahead to the breaking day. A strange energy percolated in her veins. Fear, anticipation, and excitement had fused and revived her battered spirit. In the lightless universe where she had been adrift, there was a glimmer at last.

  Against all logic, she felt certain that those who had killed her husband were mighty enough to blow up the court and everyone inside it, including her. What she most wanted to prevent would come true: Sara would become an orphan. Yet not even for Sara’s sake could she keep away from the court. She could not expect others to brave what she would not brave herself. So the night before, she visited two of Noori’s old colleagues and signed Sara’s custody over to them, just in case.

  The promise of the trial had uplifted her, though she had no hope of victory. She wanted the chance to shame her husband’s killers, to show herself standing—unafraid and defiant—before the inevitable secret deal between Iran and Germany would knock her off her stand. Her expectations of the trial were dismal. She had never seen the inside of a courtroom. What she knew of it was what she had seen in the movies—all cer
emony and no soul. She expected a corrupt, corpulent, ill-tempered and wigged man to knock a gavel on a bench from time to time. The rumors that Darabi had retained Berlin’s best attorneys terrified her. Besides, she could not fathom Fallahian having left Germany without a prize to boast of at home. A deal had already been made, she told Ehrig the day the news of the visit broke.

  “Germany is a democracy,” he assured her. “No one here, no matter how mighty, is above the law.” She had not challenged him, only flashed a deferential smile, but pitied his guileless confidence.

  For Sara, all of the mother’s cynicism came undone. Shohreh was all enthusiasm when describing the trial to her daughter. A fairy tale was about to unfold: The accused—wretched, tattered, and surely remorseful—could only hope for leniency because their guilt would be a foregone conclusion. The unforgiving judge—Solomon disguised as a middle-aged German—would instantly see through their wickedness. Just as instantly, the attorneys for the accused—acned, avaricious, and stuttering to boot—would be unanimously loathed. Whereas their attorneys, noble and winsome, would triumph within weeks if not days and ride with them in a chariot into the sunset. Sara delighted in her mother’s tale, and never questioned the plausibility of a chariot on Berlin’s busy streets, or the significance of sunset, which, being too young to know Hollywood endings, signaled only bedtime to her. She set off for school that morning, barely fitting into her own skin.

  Shohreh stared into her wardrobe. She did not want to look like a casual observer. The court would be her battlefield and she was dressing for combat. She needed armor, not mere clothes. She took her black skirt and sweater set off the hanger once again. Black, all black, from head to toe, would be her uniform for as long as the trial would last. Black, not simply as a symbol of her grief, but as the essence of the truth, the absoluteness of her need for justice.

  She set out for the courthouse. The highest security measures had been put in effect for the opening day of the trial. All traffic within a one-mile radius of the building had been diverted since dawn. All vehicles, even bicycles, were banned from parking nearby. Antiriot vans had been stationed in the neighborhood. Police officers, grenades clipped to their waists, guarded the area. The local shopkeepers—pawnbroker, Turkish restaurateur, legal bookseller—locked their doors and watched the frenzy from inside. There was no view of the main doors, only the backs of the crowd wishing to get inside. The queue snaked around the block. Dozens of reporters were on the steps pointing their microphones in the direction of the attorneys as they passed by. A few were interviewing the expatriates in the queue. Shohreh arrived flanked by two attorneys so she would not face the mayhem alone.

  The eight o’clock march was on. Nearly two hundred exiles were milling about waiting to begin, intently watching the movements of the wiry, quick-footed man who commanded them. There were still placards to hand out, banners to unfurl, order to bring to the disarrayed ranks. Moments before the strike of eight, many were chasing him with their last-minute questions. But Hamid Nowzari, a veteran orgaqnizer, simply raised the bullhorn to his mouth and shouted the first slogan:

  Schmidbauer, Schmidbauer: Keep your hands off our court!

  His left fist revolved in the air several times, and the marchers quickly gathered in a circle in the middle of Turm Street. They marched and chanted, settling into the rhythm of their orderly rebellion. Pausing at the entrance, Shohreh waved to the marchers and exchanged a grateful glance with Hamid. Years ago, she and Hamid had founded a group to see new refugees through their difficult time of transition. Now that group had come to see her through a difficult time of her own.

  When the cast of attorneys cleared the front stairs, the reporters turned to the marchers. Their savvy conductor, aware of the attention, quickly changed the slogan. He raised his right hand and half the crowd shouted, Where are the killers?

  Then he turned to his left—they erupted in an answer, Hiding in Tehran!

  The reporters’ pens rushed across their notepads. The red light of the rolling cameras blinked. Inside the building, the trial was about to begin. Outside on the street, the verdict was already in.

  14

  Iran is a nation with 2,500 years of history and an incurable forty-five-minute delay.

  —Hadi Khorsandi, exiled Iranian satirist

  If the venue was any indication, then the Mykonos trial was destined to be one of the continent’s greatest trials. It was to be held in the largest courtroom of its kind in Europe, Berlin’s High Criminal Court. Under the gilded entrance arch, there is a courtyard of white marble columns rising from a red granite floor and encircling a grand staircase. Daylight streamed in through an oval-shaped window at the midway landing of the stairs, perhaps an architectural metaphor—an all-seeing eye, not of God, but of law.

  The interior of the courthouse affected the viewer the way great cathedrals do—invoking reverence. But in Moabit court, reverence and awe were reserved for justice. The ornate, vaulted ceilings, the statues of sword-bearing warriors against the walls, the painted panes of glass at the end of the corridors, and the recurring columns flanking the antechambers that overlooked the courtyard created a beauty, whose vastness dwarfed the viewer. What the kaiser, Wilhelm II, had envisioned as “the Palace of Justice” in the late 1800s was a building that would symbolize the power of his government. A century later, the Iranian expatriates entering it were daunted by its regal quality—by the luster of a tradition whose substance they had yet to know or trust.

  The daily drama inside the building matched its appearance. Four million files circulated through the halls. Three hundred judges worked and oversaw hundreds of staff serving them. Much of that work was still being done the way it was in the late nineteenth century. Sacks of mail arrived in the mailroom every morning, where clerks stamped each piece and distributed them through numerous small cubbies. Larger correspondence was placed in bins and rolled to their destinations through the tiled corridors. Deep in the building’s underbelly was a warehouse, a legal bazaar of sorts. In its 1,400-square-meter space, knives and guns lay alongside locks of hair and soiled handkerchiefs; a depository of all the evidence presented in the trials over the years: 1906—the trial of a Berlin man who, disguising himself as a policeman, had massacred an entire neighborhood; 1967—the trial of the city police officers accused of shooting Benno Ohnesorg, the German student bystander killed at a demonstration against Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; 1977—the trials of the members of the terrorist group Red Army Faction; 1992—the trials of the Communist leaders of the former East Germany. To know the history of the Moabit courthouse was to know the history of a nation’s struggle for civility.

  The building’s main entrance was reserved for staff, attorneys, reporters, witnesses, and members of the victims’ families. Audience members entered, if they got to enter at all, through an ordinary backdoor that opened onto a labyrinth of dusty, graffiti-riddled stairways, each leading to a different courtroom. Surveillance at the threshold was punishing, to deter casual and undetermined visitors. Security officers gathered the contents of the visitors’ pockets into small bins. The wands traced the outline of the incoming bodies, then the hands retraced the same path so thoroughly that it brought color to the subjects’ cheeks. Shoes and socks came off next, where some spectators hid a pen and a piece of paper, hoping to circumvent the ban on note taking during the proceedings. Those who intended to remain in the courtroom for the whole day swore off liquids of all kinds since a trip to the lavatory required reentry and a repeat of the grueling process.

  The Mykonos trial was assigned to Hall 700, the largest of the courtrooms, the one reserved for the most notable cases. In daytime, the room was drenched in iridescent light that streamed in through the stained-glass wall. Even at night, at its most empty, Hall 700 was not a quiet room, for the sounds of the busy street below seeped in through the glass wall. Two grand chandeliers, each a round beam of eighteen vertically conjoined gold and opaque cups, lit the room but they lit most bri
ghtly the moss-colored tables beneath. Placed side-by-side and dotted with microphones, the tables were for the team of six Arab and Persian translators. Behind them, at either side, two bulletproof glass cages were built for the defendants. The cages were the first alterations that Hall 700 had undergone in many decades.

  That Thursday morning of October 28, 1993, the judges stepped through their cloakroom and arrived at the bench. Everyone rose. Chief Judge Kubsch sat in the center, his deputy and his reporter on his either side.

  Germany’s judiciary was a rigorous enterprise that shunned frills and flair. It disappointed those seeking fame and glory, rewarded only modesty and hard work. The judges were not political appointees, and so less vulnerable to outside influence. They were career professionals who had chosen to become judges upon graduation from law school. They were evaluated by their peers, promoted only for merit according to standards set by those peers. In its anonymity, becoming a judge was like choosing priesthood; in severity, it was like serving in the army.

  There was no jury in Judge Kubsch’s courtroom. The fate of the trial would not depend on the random assortment of laymen. Nor was there the worry that those deciding the case might not be able to duly understand and assess the facts. Nothing could be confusing to, or misunderstood by, a team of professionals. Therefore, no evidence had to be excluded. The five judges who entered the court that morning would not play referee to two dueling sides. Dueling sides do not exist where the prosecutor is an impartial investigator. These judges had studied the case closely for weeks and come to ask their own questions and make their own judgments. They conducted the proceedings not with the decorous formalities of most other courtrooms, but with the fluidity of a debate. Interruptions and interjections, even by the defendants, regarded as contempt elsewhere, were mostly tolerated in the trial where Judge Kubsch and his team presided.