Assassination of Ghassemlou

Culture of origin: Kurdish · Historical

Holiday sources: Iran · Kurdish

Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, born in Urmia, led the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan as secretary-general for nearly two decades. On 13 July 1989 he was shot dead in Vienna at a negotiating table with envoys of the Islamic Republic, with his aide Abdullah Ghaderi Azar and Fazel Rasul, a Kurd living in Vienna who had mediated the talks. Austria issued arrest warrants for the three Iranian envoys in November 1989, but they left freely and its investigation was suspended. In 1997 the German court in the Mykonos case found that Iran's top leadership had also ordered the Vienna murders.