Iranian regime’s trail of terrorism in Europe
Iran’s footprint of terrorism in Europe goes back to 1979, when the Islamic Republic was formed, though the attacks escalated in the mid-eighties. Following are some of them:
December 1979: Iranian agents assassinate the nephew of the Shah, Shahriar Shafiq, in Paris.
1980: A five-person ‘hit squad’ attempts to murder the last prime minister before the 1979 Islamic revolution, Shapour Bakhtiar, in Paris. The assassins failed to kill Bakhtiar.
1991: Three Iranian agents murder Bakhtiar in his Paris home.
February 1984: General Oveisi, the Shah’s former martial law administrator, and his brother are shot dead in Paris.
May 12: A car laden with explosives detonates near an Iraqi Airways office in Cyprus. Iraqi dissident groups supported by Iran claim credit.
July: Three radical Lebanese Shiites hijack an Air France plane flying from Frankfurt to Paris and divert it to Tehran.
August: A gunman attacks a Kuwaiti businessman in Spain and kills his driver.
September: A Saudi engineer is assassinated in the same town. Islamic Jihad callers claim responsibility for both attacks.
December: Bombs are found under the cars of four Iraqi diplomats in Athens. An Iranian-backed Iraqi opposition group claims responsibility.
July 13, 1989: Iranian intelligence agents in Vienna assassinate Abdul Rahman Gassemlou, secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan.
1990: Iranian assassins murder Professor Kazem Rajavi, a human rights advocate and the elder brother of Iranian opposition leader Massoud Rajavi, in Switzerland.
1992: Two men implicated in Rajavi’s murder are arrested in Paris. Switzerland requests their extradition, but in December 1993, France sends both men back to Iran.
September 1992: Gassemlou’s successor, Sadegh Sharafkandi, and three of his associates are assassinated at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.
1993: A German court begins a trial of Iranian suspects in October, and finds four Iranian officials guilty of the murders in April 1997.
June 30, 2018: Plot to attack an exiled Iranian opposition group’s rally outside Paris is foiled, and an Iranian diplomat is arrested with two others suspects.
October 2: France seizes assets belonging to Iranian intelligence services and two Iranian nationals in response to the June plot.