Abdorrahman Boroumand Center

for Human Rights in Iran

https://www.iranrights.org
Memorial
Omid, a memorial in defense of human rights in Iran
One Person’s Story

Abdolaziz Kazemi Bojd

About

Age: 35
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam (Sunni)
Civil Status: Married

Case

Date of Killing: November 5, 1996
Gravesite location is known: Yes
Location of Killing: Razmju Street, Zahedan, Sistan Va Baluchestan Province, Iran
Mode of Killing: Extrajudicial shooting

Human rights violations in this case

Extrajudicial killings

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a long history of politically motivated violence in Iran and around the world. Since the 1979 Revolution, Islamic Republic operatives inside and outside the country have engaged in kidnapping, disappearing, and killing a large number of individuals whose activities they deemed undesirable. The actual number of the victims of extrajudicial killings inside Iran is not clear; however, these murders began in February 1979, with the murder of Parviz Sayyah Sina, an Anglican Bishop, and have continued since then, both inside and outside Iran. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has so far identified over 500 extrajudicial killings outside Iran attributed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.(1)

Dissidents have been assassinated by the agents of the Islamic Republic outside Iran, where one of the first assassinations, that of a Navy Officer, Shahriar Shafiq, took place in Paris in December 1979. These assassinations have taken place in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Dubai, Iraq, and Turkey in the Middle East; Cyprus, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain in Europe; and the United States across the Atlantic Ocean. In too many cases, states have failed to guarantee the victims’ rights to the truth, justice, and remedy; states have revealed little about the assassinations and have not issued arrest warrants. Where there have been arrests and prosecutions, available information reveals a state policy of eliminating perceived enemies. 

Documentation, evidence, and traces obtained through investigations conducted by local police and judicial authorities confirm, however, the theory of state committed crimes. In certain cases, these investigations have resulted in the expulsion (The Netherlands, 2018) or arrest (Brussels, 2020; Turkey, 2021) of Iranian diplomats. In limited cases outside Iran, the perpetrators of these murders have been arrested and put on trial (Paris 1980 and 1991) and the evidence presented, revealed the defendants’ connection to Iran’s government institutions, and an arrest warrant (the Mikonos Trial in Germany) has been issued for Iran’s then-Minister of Information, Ali Fallahian and the Deputy Minister of Telecommunications, Hossein Sheikh Attar.

The manner in which these killings were organized and implemented in Iran and abroad, is indicative of a single pattern which, according to Roland Chatelin, the Swiss prosecutor, contains common parameters and detailed planning. It can be ascertained from the similarities between these murders in different countries that the Iranian government is the principal entity who ordered the implementation of these crimes. (2). In 1997, the Berlin Criminal Court, in charge of hearing the case of the shooting of Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant, officially announced that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s highest-ranking officials had issued the order to carry out the killings. According to the indictment, the decision to commit the murders was made in a committee called the “Special Operations Committee” composed of the President, the Minister of Information and Security (VAVAK), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, representatives of the various security organs and other organizations, and finally, the Leader of the Revolution. 

Iranian authorities have not officially accepted responsibility for these murders and have even attributed their commission to internal strife in opposition groups. Nevertheless, since the very inception of the Islamic Republic regime, the Islamic Republic officials have justified these crimes from an ideological and legal standpoint. In the spring of 1979, Sadeq Khalkhali, the first Chief Shari’a Judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts, officially announced the regime’s decision to implement extrajudicial executions, and justified the decision: “ … These people have been sentenced to death; from the Iranian people’s perspective, if someone wants to assassinate these individuals abroad, in any country, no government has any right to bring the perpetrator to trial as a terrorist, because such a person is the implementing agent of the sentence issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Therefore, they are Mahduroddam (“one whose blood may be spilled, whose life can be taken, without the perpetrator incurring any punishment”) and their sentence is death regardless of where they are [and where you find them].” 

More than 10 years after these proclamations, in a speech about the security forces’ success, Ali Fallahian, the regime’s Minister of Information stated the following regarding the elimination of members of the opposition: “ … We have had success in inflicting damage to many of these little groups outside the country and on our borders” (Speech broadcast on the state-run Iranian Radio and Television on August 31, 1992, quoted from Asr Iran, August 17, 2006).

Extrajudicial killings have rarely been pursued legally in Iran. The few murders that were followed up on in 1998 , which came to be known as “the Serial (Chain) Murders(3),” have brought to light the involvement and responsibility of the country’s Information officials. Several Ministry of Information agents who were defendants in the Serial Murders case, confirmed the existence of a long term government policy of extrajudicial killings and emphasized that there was planning on an annual basis to carry out these executions, for which a religious decree was issued. There was a budget allocated and there were objectives set, and those who participated in the murders were commended. In a lecture given at [the city of] Hamedan’s Bu Ali University in 1996, Sa’eed Emami, Ministry of Information Deputy Minister for Security Affairs and one of the principal defendants in the Serial Murders case – who was later said by Iranian officials to have committed suicide while in detention – had stressed that the activities of Iran’s security forces were not confined to the country’s borders: “ … We have set the security perimeter within the confines of our borders. [However,] if we see threats infiltrating inside the country from abroad, we will enlarge the perimeter.”

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1) Among the first known murders that occurred a week after the February 1979 Revolution was that of Mr. Parviz (Arastu) Sayyah Sina, the bishop of a church in the city of Shiraz. The assassination of Mr. Shahriar Shafiq, an Imperial Navy officer, in December 1979 in Paris is among the first murders committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran outside the country. ​​These killings continued in the following years inside and outside the country and in various forms.
2) Investigations into the murder of well-known personalities in France, Germany and Switzerland have yielded evidence and documentation showing that the officials and employees of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran acted as accomplices and principals [in the killings]. In France, the Islamic Republic’s Deputy Minister of Post and Telegraph was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for the murder of former Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar and his assistant, Sorush Katibeh. In Germany (Berlin), the Islamic Republic’s security agents and agents of the Lebanese Hezbollah were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of four Kurdish opposition leaders. In connection with the latter case, German Judicial authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Ali Fallahian, the then-Minister of Information. 
3) A few days before Mr. Mokhtari’s murder, Dariush Foruhar and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari, leaders of the People of Iran Party, had been killed in a most heinous manner in their own home. After Mr. Mokhtari’s body was found, the body of Mohammad Ja’far Puyandeh, another well-known literary figure, was discovered in a village near the city of Karaj. These four individuals’ cases was named the “Serial Murders”.
Human rights violations

Based on the available information, the following human rights may have been violated in this case:

The right to liberty and security of the person. The right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 9.1.

  • The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to change and manifest one’s religion or belief.

UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 18.1, ICCPR, Article 18.2; Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, Article 1 and Article 6.

In its general comment 22 (48) of 20 July 1993, the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee observed that the freedom to "have or to adopt" a religion or belief necessarily entailed the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one’s current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views, as well as the right to retain one’s religion or belief. Article 18, paragraph 2, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights bars coercion that would impair the right to have or adopt a religion or belief, including the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers to adhere to religious beliefs and congregations, to recant their religion or belief or to convert.

  • The right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas.

UDHR, Article 19; ICCPR, Article 19.1 and ICCPR, Article 19.2.

  • The right, as a member of a religious or ethnic minority, to enjoy one’s own culture or to profess and practice one’s own religion. 

UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 27.

The right to due process

  • The right to be presumed innocent until found guilty by a competent and impartial tribunal in accordance with law.

ICCPR, Article 14.1 and Article 14.2.

Capital punishment

  • The inherent right to life, of which no one shall be arbitrarily deprived.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 6.1; Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, Article 1.1, Article 1.2.

  • The right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

ICCPR, Article 7; Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Article 1 and Article 2

About this Case

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He was repeatedly summoned to the Zahedan Intelligence Office on charges of being a Wahhabi and interrogated in the agency's safe houses under the Sistan and Baluchestan Governorate building.

Information regarding the extrajudicial execution of Abdolaziz Kazemi Bojd, Esma'il's son, was gathered through an ABC interview with an informed person on November 6, 2024. Additional information was gathered from two documentaries broadcast by Kalemeh TV on the life and assassination of Mr. Kazemi Bojd (April 4, 2014; November 8, 2024), the book Wilted Flowers (Martyrs of the Sunni Community) (November 2015), and the website of the National Council of Sunnis of Iran (December 30, 2022).

Abdolaziz Kazemi Bojd was born in Zahedan on June 23, 1961. He was married with two children. At the age of 14, he memorized the entire Quran and completed his elementary and middle school education in Zahedan. In 1978, at the age of 17, he traveled to Medina, Saudi Arabia, to continue his education and received his high school diploma. In 1985, he graduated with honors from the Islamic University of Medina with a degree in Arabic Literature. Due to his father's illness, he returned to Iran and earned a master’s degree in Arabic literature from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran in 1994. He later completed his Ph.D. in the same field and university in 1996. From 1993 until his death, Mr. Kazemi Bojd served as the official notary for Sunni marriages in Zahedan. From 1994 until two months before his death, he also taught at Payam Noor University and Azad University in Zahedan. He had previously served as the Friday Prayer Imam in Birjand and led Tarawih prayers and Quran recitation sessions at the Noor Mosque in Zahedan. (ABC Interview with an Informed Person, November 6, 2024; Wilted Flowers - Martyrs of the Sunni Community, November 2015)

According to available information, Mr. Kazemi Bojd was a courageous and highly respected figure in both Baluchestan and Birjand and among religious scholars. He served as a role model for the youth and was widely known as a trusted advisor in religious and social matters. (National Council of Sunnis of Iran, December 30, 2022) He was a gifted orator with a strong command of classical Persian poetry, often quoting the works of Hafez and Sa'di in his speeches. He was also a close advisor to Molavi Abdolhamid and openly condemned the oppression of Sunnis in his university lectures. (Kalemeh TV, April 4, 2014; November 8, 2024)

Two months before his death, Mr. Kazemi Bojd was dismissed from his university position. (Wilted Flowers - Martyrs of the Sunni Community, November 2015) According to an informed person, he was repeatedly summoned by the Zahedan Intelligence Office on accusations of being a Wahhabi and was interrogated in the agency's safe houses located under the Sistan and Baluchestan Governorate building in Zahedan. The source added that in 1996, during the broadcast of the Imam Ali* television series, Mr. Kazemi Bojd criticized the series in his university lectures, describing it as filled with "lies and deceit". As a result, "the government bore a deep grudge against him. (Kalemeh TV, April 4, 2014; November 8, 2024)

Background of Extrajudicial Killings by the Islamic Republic of Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a long history of politically motivated violence in Iran and around the world. Since the 1979 Revolution, Islamic Republic operatives inside and outside the country have engaged in kidnapping, disappearing, and killing a large number of individuals whose activities they deemed undesirable. The actual number of the victims of extrajudicial killings inside Iran is not clear; however, these murders began in February 1979 and have continued since then, both inside and outside Iran. The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has so far identified over 540 killings outside Iran attributed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dissidents have been assassinated by the agents of the Islamic Republic outside Iran in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Dubai, Iraq, and Turkey in the Middle East; Cyprus, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain in Europe; and the United States across the Atlantic Ocean. In most cases, there has not been much published, and local authorities have not issued arrest warrants. But documentation, evidence, and traces obtained through investigations conducted by local police and judicial authorities confirm the theory of state committed crimes. In some instances, these investigations have resulted in the expulsion or arrest of Iranian diplomats. In a few cases outside Iran, the perpetrators of these murders have been arrested and put on trial. The evidence presented revealed the defendants’ connection to Iran’s government institutions, and an arrest warrant has been issued for Iran’s Minister of Information.

The manner in which these killings were organized and implemented in Iran and abroad is indicative of a single pattern which, according to Roland Chatelin, the Swiss prosecutor, contains common parameters and detailed planning. It can be ascertained from the similarities between these murders in different countries that the Iranian government is the principal entity that ordered the implementation of these crimes. Iranian authorities have not officially accepted responsibility for these murders and have even attributed their commission to internal strife in opposition groups. Nevertheless, since the very inception of the Islamic Republic regime, the Islamic Republic officials have justified these crimes from an ideological and legal standpoint. In the spring of 1979, Sadeq Khalkhali, the first Chief Shari’a Judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts, officially announced the regime’s decision to implement extrajudicial executions and justified the decision: “ … These people have been sentenced to death; from the Iranian people’s perspective, if someone wants to assassinate these individuals abroad, in any country, no government has any right to bring the perpetrator to trial as a terrorist, because such a person is the implementing agent of the sentence issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Therefore, they are Mahduroddam and their sentence is death regardless of where they are.” More than 10 years after these proclamations, in a speech about the security forces’ success, Ali Fallahian, the regime’s Minister of Information, stated the following regarding the elimination of members of the opposition: “ … We have had success in inflicting damage to many of these little groups outside the country and on our borders.”

At the same time, various political, judicial, and security officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran have, at different times and occasions, confirmed the existence of a long-term government policy for these extrajudicial killings and in some cases their implementation. 

Read more about the background of extrajudicial killings in the Islamic Republic of Iran by clicking on the left-hand highlight with the same title. 

Mr. Abdolaziz Kazemi Bojd’s Extrajudicial Execution

Abdolaziz Kazemi Bojd was murdered in Zahedan on the evening of November 5, 1996. (ABC Interview with an Informed Person, November 6, 2024; Kalemeh TV Documentaries, April 4, 2014 and November 8, 2024; Wilted Flowers - Martyrs of the Sunni Community, November 2015)

According to available information, Mr. Kazemi Bojd was abducted by officials of the Zahedan Intelligence Department on the evening of November 5, 1996, while driving to a pharmacy to purchase medicine for his daughter. His body was found two days later on the outskirts of Zahedan with signs of torture on his face and jaw (Wilted Flowers - Martyrs of the Sunni Community, November 2015), and 17 bullets had been fired into his head and face. The perpetrators abandoned his car on Razmjoo Moqaddam Street near the Pakistani Consulate in Zahedan. His personal belongings and identification were left untouched, and the car keys remained in the car's ignition. (Kalemeh TV Documentaries, April 4, 2014, and November 8, 2024; Wilted Flowers - Martyrs of the Sunni Community, November 2015)

According to a Kalemeh TV documentary quoting a local who lived near the Zahedan Intelligence Office, several shots were heard coming from the building on the morning of November 6, 1996. The same documentary reported that the Ministry of Intelligence had devised a plan to eliminate all graduates of the Islamic University of Medina because this group was considered part of the Sunni intellectual elite and had consistently refused to cooperate with the Ministry. (Kalemeh TV documentaries, April 4, 2014 and November 8, 2024)

Mr. Kazemi Bojd was buried on the evening of November 10, 1996 in the village of Bojd in Birjand County. (Wilted Flowers - Martyrs of the Sunni Community, November 2015) 

Iran Officials’ Reaction

There is no information available regarding Iranian officials’ reaction. 

Family’s Reaction 

There is no information available regarding the reaction of Mr. Kazemi Bojd’s family  

Impacts on Family 

There is no information available regarding the impact on Mr. Kazemi Bojd’s family

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* “Imam Ali” was the title of a historical and religious TV series that was broadcast during the 1996-97 season from Iranian television. This series, produced with government financing, portrayed the five-year rule of the Shi’a’s first Imam in a biased manner, according to Shi’a sources and interpretations, which caused the Sunni leaders as well as their followers to object. 

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