Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (Kurdish:عەبدولڕەحمان قاسملوو/Ebdurehman Qasimlú) (December 22, 1930 – July 13, 1989) was a Kurdish political leader.
Ghassemlou was the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of IranPDKI (KDPI) (حیزبی دیموکڕاتی کوردستانی ئێران - حدکا/Partiya Demokrata Kurdistana Îranê - PDKÎ) from 1973 to 1989, when he was killed by individuals thought to be agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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Born in Urmia, West Azarbaijan, Iran, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was instructed in a Quranic school. He was the son of Mohammad Vesugh, a wealthy and landowner Kurd . Ghassemlou started his university studies in France, and pursued them in Czechoslovakia, where he met his wife Helen Krulich. They had two daughters together, Mina (1953) and Hewa (1955). He knew nine languages including Kurdish, Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Arabic, French, English, Russian, Czech and was familiar with German and Slovakian.
Ghassemlou went back to Kurdistan in 1952, after completing his studies. He then spent several years as an active militant in the Kurdish political field. In 1973, during the Third Congress of the PDKÎ, he was elected to the position of Secretary General of the party, a position to which he was re-elected several times until his assassination.
In 1979, his party supported the revolution which ended in the fall of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. However, the party boycotted the referendum for the new constitution. This was the start of confrontation of the party and the new regime, which ended in a military oppression of the party by the central government. Ayatollah Khomeini declared a "holy war" on the separationist Kurds. Thousands of executions and massacres followed in Kurdistan, which were continued up to 1984 in the middle of Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988).
In 1988, after the war had ended, the Iranian government decided it was time to negotiate. Several meetings followed in Vienna, on December 28, December 30 and January 20. Another meeting was set up for July 13, again in Vienna.
The Tehran delegation was as before, namely Mohammed Jafar Sahraroudi and Hadji Moustafawi, except that this time there was also a third member : Amir Mansur Bozorgian whose function was that of bodyguard. The Kurds also had a three-man delegation : Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, his aide Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar (member of the PDKI Central Committee) and Fadhil Rassoul, an Iraqi university professor who had acted as a mediator. The next day, 13 July 1989, in the very room where the negotiation took place Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was killed by three bullets fired at very close range. His assistant Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar was hit by eleven bullets and Fadhil Rassoul by five. Hadji Moustafawi succeeded in escaping. Mohammad Jafar Sahraroudi received minor injuries and was taken to hospital, questioned and allowed to go. Amir Mansur Bozorgian was released after 24 hours in police custody and took refuge in the Iranian Embassy.
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The PDKÎ Deputy Secretary General, Sadegh Sharafkandi, succeeded Ghassemlou as Secretary General (he was assassinated on September 17, 1992). Abdullah Ghaderi Azar and Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou were buried on July 20 in Paris at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
According to the pdki.org website
In late November 1989 the Austrian courts issued a warrant for the arrest of the three Iranian representatives and the Austrian Government expressly accused the Iranian Government as having instigated the attack on Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and the two other Kurds.[2]
The three Iranian representatives in the negotiations with the Kurdish leaders could return to Iran as free people, one of them had never been in custody, one was escorted to the Vienna airport nine days after the crime by Austrian police and the third, after one night of arrest, spent a few months in the Iranian embassy in Vienna before he disappeared from Austria. Warrants for their arrest were not issued before November 1989. 20 years after the triple assessination they have not been executed, still. Contrary to the German Mykonos-trial after the murder of Ghassemlou's successor Dr. Sadegh Sharafkandi in Berlin the crime in Vienna was never clarified by any court. The Mykonos verdict of April 10, 1997 clearly states the responsibility of the then Iranian government for the murders in Berlin and in Vienna.[3][4]