Dariush Forouhar

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Dariush Forouhar (1928-November 1998) was a founder and leader of the Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran (Nation of Iran Party), a pan-Iranist opposition party in Iran and served as Minister of Labor in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979. He later became a critic of the Islamic government, and in 1998 he and wife were assassinated in one of the Chain murders of Iran, for which a deputy security official of the Ministry of Information, Saeed Emami, was officially found culpable.

Forouhar was born in Isfahan. According to Ali Razmjoo in Hezb-e-Pan-Iranist (also see links here), he was one of the founding members of the original Pan-Iranist Party of Iran in 1951 with Mohsen Pezeshkpour. During the Pahlavi era, he had been very active in the anti-Shah nationalist movement and was a strong supporter of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

In the midst of post-revolutionary tensions in Iranian Kurdistan in 1979, Forouhar was part of a delegation sent by Tehran to negotiate with Kurdish political and religious leaders. Although this delegation's recommendations were never implemented by the central government and Kurdish revolt was dealt with harshly, Forouhar's attempts to reach a peaceful settlement with Kurds earned him respect among Kurds.

He and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar, were assassinated in their home in 1998. The murders, which are believed to have been politically motivated, remain unsolved, although the general belief is that the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was involved and had ordered the killings [1] [2]

Under the public opinion pressure, the then Iranian president Mohammad Khatami formed a committee to follow up the case, which eventually asked for the resignation of the then Ministry of Information, Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. One of the main characters behind the case, Saeed Emami, was reported committing suicide while in prison.

They are survived by their son, Arash, and daughter, Parastou. Both are politically active and continue to raise awareness of the plight of political dissidents in Iran.

Ms. Shirin Ebadi, the lawyer of the Forouhars' relatives quoting Parastou says: "All evidences show that my father was preparing himself to go to prison, because at the time of his slaying, his shoes had no laces, he did not wear his wrist watch and had his wallet emptied of its contents and papers except for some money."

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  1. ^ iranian.com<ref> [http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/1999/November/Forouhar/ Forouhar]</li> <li id="cite_note-1">'''[[#cite_ref-1|^]]''' [http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iran/vevak-ops.htm globalsecurity.org]<ref> <ref>[http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/1999/01/990112-iran.htm globalsecurity.org 1999]<ref> <ref>[http://www.iranian.com/Arts/2002/November/Forouhar/df.html iranian.com Forouhar 2002]<ref>. It is thought that the murders were provoked by Forouhar's criticism of human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic in interviews with Western radio stations that beamed Persian-language programs to Iran. This "brought them to the attention of Iran's ubiquitous intelligence service."<ref>Sciolino, Elaine, ''Persian Mirrors'', Touchstone, (2000), p.234</li></ol></ref>

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