(2 of 9)
Nonetheless, the secret 177-page prosecutor's report, a copy of which TIME has obtained, lays out a credible chain of accusations. It declares flatly that "Iranian intelligence services effectively took part in carrying out this criminal conspiracy." The head of the intelligence and security ministry, Ali Fallahian, is believed to be in charge of Tehran's worldwide assassination networks. Investigators also claim to have uncovered links to Iran's foreign ministry, telecommunications ministry, Islamic orientation ministry and state television network, IRIB. One key charge in the prosecutor's report is that an important member of the alleged assassins' support network entered Switzerland with an order of mission typed under the letterhead of the foreign ministry and initialed by a ranking official above the typed words "for the Foreign Minister," referring to Ali Akbar Velayati, one of the most senior members of the government. "The whole Iranian state apparatus is at the service of these operations," says a French official. "The government assumes the legitimacy of killing opponents anywhere in the world."
Since 1979, more than 60 Iranian dissidents have been murdered abroad. "No one is immune to this threat," says Manouchehr Ganji, leader of a Paris-based opposition group, who lives with 24-hour police protection. Nor are non- Iranians safe. Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born author of The Satanic Verses, remains under a Tehran death sentence pronounced five years ago and reconfirmed last month. Iranian operatives are suspected in the killings of Saudi and Jordanian intelligence agents as well as the murders of five Turkish intellectuals since 1990. "Turkey is a prime target," says Istanbul police chief Necdet Menzir, "because we are a Muslim country with a secular democratic system."
On the basis of extensive reporting in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Turkey, much of it involving privileged access to investigators as well as to police and court files, TIME has compiled this report on four major murder cases. Complete with mysterious blue baseball caps, safe houses and none-too- bright hit men, these cases, Western authorities believe, point to Tehran's role in hunting down its opponents abroad.
Bakhtiar: Follow the Numbers
The trail that led French investigators to uncover the Tehran connection began with the killers' flight from the Bakhtiar murder scene on Aug. 6, 1991. The bodies of the former Prime Minister and his secretary were not discovered until the morning of Aug. 8, giving the fugitives a substantial head start. But Vakili and Azadi, who shaved off their mustaches and ditched their bloody shirts in the Bois de Boulogne, were beset by a series of mishaps after parting company with Boyerahmadi. Traveling on false Turkish passports and speaking little French, the pair hopped a train to Lyons but got off at the wrong station and missed a connection to Geneva, where their contacts were waiting to sneak them back to Tehran. The morning after the murder, as police reconstructed their flight, they arrived at the Swiss border by taxi. An official suspected that their visas were forged and refused to admit them. Five days later, they arrived in Annecy, where they left a wallet full of incriminating information in a phone booth.