Cinema Rex arson attack

On August 19, 1978 (28 Mordad 1357), an arson attack was carried out on the Cinema Rex in Abadan , Iran, in which 422 people were killed. The high number of those killed in the fire sparked violent protests first in Abadan and later across Iran. The opposition movement claimed that the attack was carried out by the SAVAK secret service on behalf of Mohammad Reza Shah . Even before the Islamic Revolution it was clarified that members of the Qom clergy were acting on the instructions of Khomeinihad commissioned the attack. The attack on Cinema Rex in Abadan was part of a series of 28 arson attacks that took place across Iran that day. The date of the 28th Mordad was chosen by the planners of the arson attacks to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of Mohammad Mossadegh , the 28th Mordad in 1332 (August 19, 1953).

The fire

The fire broke out during a screening of the socially critical black and white film Gavaznha (Deer) by director Masoud Kimiai with Behrouz Vossoughi, Faramarz Gharibian and Nosrat Partovi, produced in Iran in 1976 . The film tells the story of the burglar Qodrat, who is followed by the police after a break-in and wants to hide himself and the stolen property in the house of his friend Rasul. Qodrat wants to help his drug addict friend to break away from drugs. When the police appear in front of the house, Qodrat thinks that Rasul has betrayed him and shoots him. When he realizes that his friend Rasul is innocent, he turns himself in to the police. In the original script, the film ends with a dramatic exchange of fire between Qodrat and the police, in which Qodrat is killed. After the censorship was imposed, the ending of the version shown in Iran was changed to the effect that Qodrat surrendered to the police.

Although the fire brigade and police were on the spot immediately, it was not possible to extinguish the fire or to free the trapped. The police and the public prosecutor began investigations immediately after the fire-fighting work was finished.

Rumors made the rounds. The doors of the cinema were locked with chains and therefore the cinema-goers could not get outside. The fire brigade only arrived at the scene of the fire with empty tank trucks twenty minutes after the fire alarm. Passers-by who tried to get into the burning cinema to help those trapped were prevented by the police.

Reactions

Headline the day after the fire: "Public mourning across the country - 377 people died in a fire in a cinema in Abadan"

The people of Abadan were in shock. The number of people killed in the arson attack was initially given as 377. The number was later corrected to 430 deaths. Abadan cemetery staff said that 600 dead were buried after the fire. The cinema stated the number of tickets sold as 650. Many victims were burned beyond recognition, so that identification and burial by name were practically impossible.

On the occasion of the arson attack, Mohammad Reza Shah spoke of the great fear that would soon reign in Iran if the opposition came to power. He wanted to make the difference to his future vision for Iran, the great civilization , clear. The government under Prime Minister Jamjid Amusegar seemed paralyzed. Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi wanted to go to Abadan immediately to visit the families of the victims and express their condolences. Prime Minister Amusegar thought it would be better to wait for the results of the investigation first.

In this situation of shock and grief, three days after the arson attack, Khomeini from his exile in Iraq spoke up with an open letter to the residents of Abadan. In this letter he wrote, among other things, that he was convinced that no Muslim could be the cause of such a cruel catastrophe. It is very clear that the hands of the cruel system are at work to cast the Islamic movement in a bad light. The day before, on August 21, Khomeini had written to the members of Nehzat Azadi , a party of the National Front , and their leader Mehdi Bāzargān that Mohammad Reza Shah was burning and destroying the Iranian resistance movement, which was working for justice, before the world wanted to make bad. It is their duty to make their satanic plans known to the world and not to allow their humane Islamic movement to be defiled.

The opposition movement then began to organize demonstrations across the country. In Germany, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, Iranian students occupied the embassy buildings of Iran together with German, Belgian, Danish or Dutch fellow students and demanded the resignation of the Shah. On August 27, Prime Minister Amusegar offered to resign. Mohammad Reza Shah accepted the resignation, a decision he later regretted. Jafar Sharif-Emami became the new Prime Minister .

Khomeini had not remained inactive in the meantime. To make it clear to the world who was the real culprit in the Abadan arson attack, he gave the following interview to a radio reporter from Radio-TV-France on September 14, 1978:

“It is the Shah who stole freedom from our nation and our men and women. It is the Shah who does not allow anyone to breathe. It is the Shah who built cinemas to morally corrupt our youth with colonialist programs. Boys and girls have lost all decency and morality. They are not aware of the catastrophic situation in Iran. The Shah's cinemas are a center of prostitution. They encourage the development of an artificial human being who has no idea of ​​himself or of the country's catastrophic situation. The Islamic Nation is well aware of these centers of immorality. She knows that they are directed against the good of our country. Without the clergy expressly saying anything, everyone knows that these centers of immorality must be destroyed.

The Cinema Rex in Abadan was set on fire by Shah elements. The Shah has always spoken of the great fear that will reign in Iran if its opponents come to power. With the fire in Abadan he wanted to show what Great Fear looks like. He had more than 400 people burned to death with unbelievable brutality that could hardly be surpassed.

Worse than cinemas are the banks, which play a big role in Iran's bankruptcy and underdevelopment. The nation knows perfectly well that these centers are ruining our economy and must therefore be set on fire. "

Investigations before the Islamic Revolution

With so much politics going on, the actual investigation into the arson attack seemed to be out of focus. Siavash Amini Ale Agha , police colonel, director of the police information department and anti-terrorist expert, rushed to the scene as soon as the fire-fighting work was over to look for evidence of a possible arson attack and to secure any evidence. He found some broken bottles in the lobby of the cinema. During the investigation, he testified that it must have been a carefully planned arson. In his report, he wrote that the first thing to do was to set fire to the auditorium's wooden doors. The walls of the cinema were made entirely of wood, so they quickly caught fire. A PVC panel was attached to the wooden walls that must have caught fire immediately. The fire brigade's attempts to extinguish the fire from the outside, in his estimation, had to fail because the fire must have spread across the entire auditorium within a few minutes. For the police and helpers, rescue of those trapped was virtually impossible due to the construction of the cinema. The cinema was on the first floor of a shopping mall. The entrance to the cinema was inside the passage. A staircase led to an L-shaped lobby, from which three doors led into the auditorium. At the back of the auditorium was a single emergency exit that led to the outside via a staircase. Usually the emergency exit was locked. After the end of a performance, the audience left the cinema using the same staircase that also served as the staircase. In the event of a fire in the auditorium doors, there was no other option to leave the auditorium.

Hossein Takbalizadeh , who was later identified as one of the perpetrators, initially remained undisturbed in Abadan for a few days and then drove to Bandar Abbas to avoid further persecution. He returned to Abadan three months after the fire. After returning from Bandar Abbas, he told his friends and mother that he had been involved in the fire at Cinema Rex. His mother told this in turn to a friend who immediately informed her circle of acquaintances again. After just a few days, the whole city knew who had started the fire at Cinema Rex. Hossein Takbalizadeh was arrested by police in November 1978 and remained in prison without trial until the Islamic Revolution.

When questioned, Hossein Takbalizadeh testified as follows:

“I was addicted to heroin and funded my drug addiction by selling heroin. I got to know Asghar Noruzi in our district. He took me to the mosque and to church services. My new friends said you have to put an end to drugs. They sent me to a hospital in Isfahan for recovery. I returned to Abadan cured.

In the mosque I met Farajollah Bazrkaar, his brother Fallah and Yadollah. We regularly drove to the border with Iraq and brought books and tapes of Khomeini's speeches to Abadan. After a while, I didn't want to take part in these actions anymore because I thought the whole thing was pointless. I went to Isfahan to get my living selling drugs again. After a while, I decided to return to Abadan.

At noon on Amordad 28, 1357, I met Farajollah, Fallah, and Yadollah. We wanted to set fire to a cinema that day. We bought four bottles of thinner and went to the Soheyla cinema. There we poured the thinner on the floor of the anteroom, but suddenly visitors came and we had to wait until the visitors had disappeared in the auditorium. When we tried to set the thinner on fire, it was already gone. We left the Soheyla cinema with nothing achieved. At 8 p.m. we had dinner at a grill stand and bought more bottles of thinner and oil in the bazaar to make a flammable mixture. We took a taxi to the Soheyla cinema, but the entrance to the cinema was already closed. We walked into the center of Abadan and passed the Cinema Rex, which we then set on fire. "

The perpetrator was found and the trial of Hossein Takbalizadeh could have started. However, all further steps were blocked on the lower floors of the local department of the Ministry of Justice. Prime Minister Sharif-Emami, who had announced a government program of national reconciliation, failed to notice that the proceedings in the Cinema Rex case were not progressing. A court case that could have exonerated Mohammad Reza Shah as the client and the SAVAK as the perpetrator, but which would have incriminated the revolutionary clergy, especially Khomeini, as the client of the arson attack, did not materialize. The director of the SAVAK Nasser Moghadam , who only took office in June 1978, prevented the publication of the results of the investigation, which would have weighed heavily on the clergy. The government apparently believed that the results of the investigation into the perpetrators of the arson attack in Abadan, which were damaging to the clergy, would undermine the success of the prime minister's reconciliation policy. So it must have been clear even before the overthrow of the Shah that the highest circles of the Qom clergy were involved in the arson attack in Abadan.

The Islamic Revolution

On Bahman 22nd (February 11th) 1979, in the first days of the Islamic Revolution, all prisons were opened. That day, Hossein Takbalizadeh was also released. He first drove to Isfahan and then on to Tehran to introduce himself to Khomeini as the attacker in Abadan. Due to the large number of visitors, however, he was not allowed to go to Khomeini. Takbalizadeh drove back to Isfahan and then back to Abadan. In Andimesk, he bought the Javanan magazine and discovered his picture with the caption: "The SAVAK killer has broken out of prison". Back in Abadan, Takbalizadeh went to see the newly appointed MP Rashidian. Rashidian advised him to stay at home with his mother until a solution was found. Takbalizadeh wanted to know whether he was now a free man. So he went to Committee 48 and the new governor of Abadan, Kiavash. Kiavash had him transferred to Tehran to see Haschem Sabbaghian , the first interior minister of the Islamic Republic. Interior Minister Sabbaghian released Takbalizadeh home to meet with Prime Minister Mehdi Bāzargān . Takbalizadeh returned to Abadan via Isfahan. Interior Minister Sabbaghian said nothing more.

Hossein Takbalizadeh then wrote to Javanan magazine: I have to remind you that after the victory of the Islamic Revolution I wanted to go to Palestine as a fighter. But what you did to me ruined my life. Now I have to wait and see what happens to me . Hossein Takbalizadeh did not let the demonstrably false accusation of being a SAVAK agent rest. He turned to Ayatollah Taheri and Ayatollah Khademi . Both refused to take action. Now it was enough for Takbalizadeh. He went to Qom to finally meet Khomeini to settle his case once and for all. But in Qom he was not allowed to audition at Khomeini without further ado. So he wrote a letter to Khomeini's office asking for an appointment:

“I am Hossein Takbalizadeh, one of the fighters of Islam. I am innocent and on a plot I was accused of causing the Cinema Rex fire. My photo was published in Javanan magazine. Now that with the help of God and an uprising of all classes of the nation, the Shah has been eliminated, and Islam has shown its true face, law and justice is spreading everywhere, I too hope for the victory of justice. I was selected by the Warring Clergy Association for this terrible mission. And now, after the successful regime change, I am being referred to as a SAVAK agent. After this accusation I can no longer find work, I can no longer earn a living, and I am no longer allowed to go to the mosque to hear the glorious and fruitful Islamic sermons of the Ayatollahs. I ask my omniscient guide and loving father to work on my case as soon as possible.

The Khomeini office wrote: 'In the name of God, Mr. Takbalizadeh, go to Hojatolleslam Jami, who is a member of the Warring Clergy Association and who has responsibility in Abadan. Rest assured, if you are not defiled by this sin you keep talking about, God's righteousness will save you. '"

Khomeini sent Takbalizadeh back to Abadan. The relatives of the victims and the police were waiting for him in front of his mother's house and arrested him immediately.

Investigation after the Islamic Revolution

Not only Takbalizadeh, but also the families of the victims had in the meantime turned to Khomeini to finally clarify the circumstances of the crime and bring the guilty to their punishment. On Esfand 10 (March 1), a father who had lost five children in the fire had an appointment with Khomeini. At that meeting, he had given him a letter that had been signed by all of the victims' families. In the letter, the relatives of the victims demanded that the perpetrators should finally be found and punished. But nothing happened.

On September 9, 1358 (October 1, 1979) a 25-member delegation of the victims' families went to Khomeini and ultimately demanded that the case be clarified. Khomeini sent them away. But the families of the victims appeared on another date. This time Khomeini hired Attorney General Ayatollah Ali Ghoddusi to handle the case. Again nothing happened. They went to Sheikh Ali Tehrani , who agreed to deal with the case if he received a written assignment. Sheikh Ali Tehrani is the brother-in-law of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , who later succeeded Khomeini. Nothing happened.

On Farvardin 29, 1359 (April 18, 1980), the families of the victims published a memorandum to alert the public to their intention to start a three-day sit-in, accompanied by a hunger strike. Should the case not finally be dealt with, they would continue the sit-in strike indefinitely. In the end, the sit-in lasted four and a half months until Amordad 11 (August 2). The demands of the strikers were: 1. The establishment of a special court, before which all accused and all witnesses would have to testify in public. 2. All sessions of the Special Court would have to be broadcast live on television and radio. Two days after the sit-in began in the square in front of the Abadan tax office, Ayatollah Azari Ghomi called the strikers opponents of the revolution. On 1st Ordibehesht 1359 (April 21, 1980) the police, who had been assigned to protect the strikers, were recalled by order of Ayatollah Ghomi. After twelve days of strike the time had come. A special commission has been set up to handle the case. However, the head of the special commission refused to include the victims 'families in the investigation, which in turn led to massive protests by the victims' families. They accused the authorities of being afraid to reveal the real culprits. The strike therefore continued. On Khordad 23, 1359 (June 13, 1980), Chomaghdar - a group of Hezbollah thugs - came to break up the strike and drive out the strikers. But the strikers could not be driven out. Despite the beatings and insults from the authorities, they remained in the square in front of the tax office and continued their strike, as the people of Abadan supported them in their efforts to clarify the situation.

Judicial officials said it was clear who the perpetrators were - namely Takbalizadeh and the accomplices who died in the fire. However, the families of the victims were not satisfied with this explanation. They wanted to know who was behind the assassins and who had given the order to assassinate the cinema. Hossein Takbalizadeh agreed to disclose everything. But the authorities initially prevented his testimony and prevented any contact between him and the public. It was becoming increasingly clear that the judicial authorities had become scared. Ambiguous speeches in mosques, on the radio and on television on this case suggested that something was being covered up. The persistent demand of the victims' relatives that the course of events of the arson attack should finally be disclosed and that both those directly involved and the client should be brought to justice brought the judicial authorities under pressure. Instead of investigating and prosecuting, thugs were sent to the strikers and attempts were made to intimidate the families of the victims.

At 1:30 am on Amordad 11, 1359 (August 2, 1980), the Revolutionary Guard ( Pasdaran ) attacked the strikers in front of the Abadan tax office. Hodschatoleslam Tabatabai, judge for Islamic law in Abadan, had given the order to arrest and transport all strikers, to drive them to the nearby desert and to release them there. The families of those arrested immediately organized a demonstration in Abadan, which was broken up by the Pasdaran with tear gas. In the afternoon, the families of the victims gathered in front of the Metropol cinema in Abadan and started a new demonstration. There was a real street battle between the inhabitants of Abadan and the Pasdaran. The demands of the demonstrators were: Public access to the investigation files. The following day, the 12th of Amordad (August 3rd), the residents of Abadan went to the cemetery and continued their demonstrations there. Fifteen days later, on the 27th of Amordad (August 18th), on the 2nd anniversary of the arson attack, a large demonstration took place in the Gholamreza Takhti Stadium in Abadan. The following day, the 28th Amordad, the Abadan clergy organized a counter-demonstration under the motto: America is our enemy.

Now rumors surfaced for the first time that the clergy had commissioned the fire to incite the inhabitants of Abadan against the Shah. All over Iran, before, during and after the revolution, cinemas, banks, bars and restaurants were set on fire by so-called revolutionaries. People also began to remember Khomeini's speeches before the revolution, in which he called for cinemas to be set on fire as the center of prostitution. Suddenly everything came together. The fact that the clergy had accused SAVAK agents of starting the fire before the revolution, but delayed the investigation after the revolution and, now that the investigation had begun, was concealing the results of the investigation, could only indicate that they were true To be found guilty among the clergy. The fact that on the second anniversary of the arson attack the clergy did not commemorate the burnt victims but staged a demonstration against the USA made it clear to the residents of Abadan that the Islamic Revolution had not brought them truth and justice as promised, but only lies and cover-ups. Sarafi, an inspector in the Abadan public prosecutor's office and officially in charge of the investigation, publicly stated that there was nothing he could do because the clergy were blocking the investigation of the arson attack. Following this statement, he was immediately withdrawn from the case. The further investigations have now been handed over to a newly created Islamic investigative body. Prosecutor Zargar became the new investigator. After he too discovered that he was being pressured by the clergy to "steer the investigation in the right direction," he too resigned.

Hodschatoleslam Musavi-Tabrizi has now been appointed as the new head of the investigation . The first thing he did was to make it known that anyone who had anything to say on the matter should come to the prosecutor. The special court requested by the relatives of the victims was finally set up.

The process

The special court, consisting of Hodschatoleslam Musavi-Tabrizi and one other assessor, began to sit on Monday, 2nd Shahrivar 1359 (August 24, 1980). The sessions were held in the Cinema Taj. They were public and televised. There were no lawyers and no jury. 25 people, former employees of the SAVAK, the police, heads of the local authorities, the owners, managers and all employees of the Cinema Rex as well as employees of the waterworks and the fire department were charged.

At the beginning of the first session, the prosecutor called for the death penalty for all of the accused. Then the main suspect appeared: Hossein Takbalizadeh. Takbalizadeh testified that he, Farajollah Bazrkaar and Fallah had several meetings at Ghods Mosque (formerly Farahabad Mosque) with the following people:

• Mohammad Rashidian , a teacher at the Koran school at the time, now a member of parliament,
• Mahmood Abolpour , former student at Abadan Oil University and now head of the local department of the Ministry of Education in Abadan, and
• Abdollah Lorghaba , member of the Abadan Airport Islamic Association

All three were religious activists from the Hosseinieh of Esfahanis and the Ghods Mosque. In addition to the meetings in the mosque, they also met a few times in Rashidian's house. "Using jet fuel that Abdollah Lorghaba had brought from the airport, we went to the local Rastachiz party office and set it on fire." The public impact of this attack was, however, very small.

“For this reason, we decided to set fire to something that would have a greater public impact, most of all leading to demonstrations against the Shah. We had a few more meetings in the Ghods Mosque. There we were told to set fire to Cinema Soheyla. But the day we tried to set the Soheyla cinema on fire, we saw that the cinema had large emergency exits and that it was easy to escape into the street. Furthermore, the cinema buffet was built in such a way that one had a close eye on the entrance. On the other side of the buffet was the cash register and the admission control, so that we would have been spotted when the fire was started. That's why we couldn't set the Soheyla cinema on fire. Even if we had managed to start a fire, all moviegoers could easily have escaped into the streets. Although we bought tickets for the current film, we also had the gasoline with us, hidden in bags for sunflower seeds and other nibbles. But after the film we left the Soheyla cinema and went to Cinema Rex to investigate the possibility of an arson attack.

The film Gavaznha was shown in Cinema Rex. Myself and Farajollah went to the movies with the aviation fuel that Abdollah Lorghaba had gotten. Fallah had bought three tickets. We went to the cinema and saw the movie. Halfway through the performance, we got up and went to the toilet. Nobody was in the foyer of the cinema. We dumped the gasoline on the cinema doors. Farajollah set fire to the back door of the cinema. I set fire to two other doors. We ran down the stairs to the exit. Nobody noticed us. We took to the streets and I didn't see Fallah again. "

After this testimony, Hodschatoleslam Musavi-Tabrizi called an employee of the cinema as a witness.

“The clerk said he was outside the cinema. After noticing the fire, he went back to the cinema. There he met the cleaning man. Both tried to start the fire extinguishers. But since they didn't know about the extinguishers, they would have left the burning cinema in a hurry. The projectionist and another employee of the cinema stayed behind and were among the fire victims. "

Hodschatoleslam Musavi-Tabrizi interviewed three police officers and a firefighter. Everyone said they tried everything to put out the fire and save the moviegoers.

Then Abdollah Lorghaba and Mahmood Abolpour testified. They were presented by the chairman Hodschatoleslam Musavi-Tabrizi as believers and supporters of the Islamic Revolution, the aim of which was to fight against the Shah regime. After being sworn in, they confirmed Hossein Takbalizadeh's testimony.

Now it would have been the turn of the MP Mohammad Rashidian, who was considered to have planned the arson attack. Chairman Hodschatoleslam Musavi-Tabrizi said MP Rashidian was too busy. He had already been interviewed by telephone and it was not necessary for him to appear here today. Incidentally, he could be summoned at any time afterwards if it should prove necessary.

Hossein Takbalizadeh made further statements in the following fourteen sessions of the Special Court. After the revolution they wanted to send him abroad. The Pasdar Habibollah Baazyar therefore accompanied Takbalizadeh to Isfahan. They went to Ayatollah Khademi and Ayatollah Taheri. From there he drove to Hashem Sabbaghian's office.

Habibollah was called as a witness. He presented the matter in such a way that Takbalizadeh was an unemployed beggar whom they wanted to help. He didn't know anything about other things.

In the course of the proceedings it became increasingly clear that Mohammad Rashidian, together with Mohammad Kiavash, then both teachers at the Koran school and now members of parliament in Tehran, were the planners of the attack. It was also made public that Rashidian formed Revolutionary Committee 48. It became clear that all of these people were in contact with each other on the day of the fire. Everyone involved in planning the arson attack was given high posts after the Islamic Revolution. Only Hossein Takbalizadeh, who started the fire, was left empty-handed on charges that he was a SAVAK agent.

At the end of the proceedings, Hodschatoleslam Musavi-Tabrizi explained the sequence of events and named the guilty. One of the prime suspects, MP Rashidian, was acquitted. Musavi-Tabrizi said Rashidian was a teacher. He had discussed the plan of an arson attack on a cinema with one of his students. The student in turn revealed the plan to a SAVAK agent. The SAVAK implemented the plan and set fire to the cinema with its people in order to be able to later accuse Rashidian and the Islamic movement. The evidence that SAVAK agents carried out the arson attack was irrefutable. General Reza Razmi, chief of the Abadan police, is responsible for the high number of deaths.

The witness Ali Mohammadi, security guard at the Hosseinieh Esfahani religious school, had appeared earlier. He testified that General Razmi had locked the entrance doors of the cinema with chains to prevent the audience from escaping into the street. He wanted to smash the doors to the cinema with his car to open up an escape route for those trapped, but the police prevented him from doing so.

This statement was in stark contrast to the statement of Shahnaz Ghanbari, who was on the way to the toilet with her two children at the beginning of the fire and had met another man there who had also taken his children to the toilet. Everyone was able to escape from the cinema through the entrance. She testified that she did not see a chain on the doors of the entrance. The former attorney general of Abadan, Sarafi, who had also rushed to the scene of the fire that evening, had sworn that he had not seen any chains on the doors of the entrance.

A young man who was in the toilet of the cinema and, after noticing the fire, jumped through the toilet window into the street and broke his leg, testified that the fire in the foyer after a short time Time was so strong that no one could have walked from the auditorium through the foyer into the stairwell and then on to the entrance or exit.

The judgment

Six were sentenced to death, the rest to prison terms. Those sentenced to death were:

• Hossein Takbalizadeh , main culprit.
• Major Bahmani , police officer. He had gone on vacation a few days before the arson attack and returned from vacation on the day of the arson attack. Although officially still on vacation, after hearing about the fire, he ran to the scene to help. He was accused of planning the vacation and his return to distract from his involvement in the crime.
• Ali Naderi , owner of the cinema. He was 60 years old and lived in Tehran. He was charged with not paying enough attention to the security of the building.
• Esfandiar Ramezani , manager of the cinema. He was accused of paying insufficient attention to the safety of spectators and of not hiring security-trained employees.
• Siavash Amini Ale-Agha , police colonel, director of the information department and anti-terrorism expert. While the fire was still on, he had rushed to the cinema to begin investigating the cause of the fire and to secure evidence of a possible arson attack. He had found some broken bottles in the burned-out lobby of the cinema. He had testified that it must have been a carefully planned arson.
• Farajollah Mojtahedi , SAVAK officer. He had been transferred to Abadan shortly before the fire. The court stated that the transfer was part of the plan related to the arson attack carried out by SAVAK. Mojtahedi was already ill during the trial. He testified that he was a completely normal SAVAK employee who always worked correctly and never prosecuted anyone while he was on duty at SAVAK. His transfer to Abadan was purely routine.

A police colonel, five firefighters and three cinema workers were sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison. They were charged with deliberately preventing or delaying the extinguishing of the fire. While there was no evidence of this, the court found it proven.

One of the rumors on the first day after the fire was that the fire engines were not carrying water, which had been definitely proven wrong during the trial. The residents testified that the fire brigade had immediately started to extinguish with water from tank trucks until the hoses were connected to the hydrant and could be extinguished via hydrants. The commander of the fire brigade tried to testify about the fire brigade operation, but this was not taken into account.

Lorghaba and Abolpur, who were involved in the planning and who had procured the jet fuel for the arson attack, were only called as witnesses. And although they had not denied their connection to Hossein Takbalizadeh and had confirmed his testimony, they were not further bothered.

The backers

A few months before the arson attack in Abadan, the opposition had organized demonstrations in Tehran , Tabriz , Qom , Mashhad and Isfahan against the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah . All of Iran was in an uproar. Only in Khuzestan did the situation remain calm. The cities of Ahvaz and Abadan were under government control in the region that produced oil, which is so important to the entire Iranian economy. Oil exploration, the petrochemical industry, and the refinery had brought considerable wealth to the province's residents. Abadan workers had successfully fought for the nationalization of the oil industry and against the British owners of the refinery and oil production facilities in the 1950s. After the nationalization, the city had flourished, so that the residents of Abadan saw no reason for demonstrations against the government. Rather, the majority of the population was directed against the opposition movement. Oil refinery workers called on Mohammad Reza Shah to finally put an end to the demonstrations in the country, arrest the troublemakers and restore law and order.

16 years after the arson attack, Sheikh Ali Tehrani revealed the perpetrators of the attack in an interview with Ali Reza Meybodi for the US-based radio "Voice of Iran" . Sheikh Tehrani stated:

“After the revolution, I became an Islamic judge in Mashhad. After Khomeini put pressure on me to deal with the Cinema Rex affair in Abadan, I went to Abadan and looked at the investigation files. The files said that during the reign of the Shah, the Qom clergy had decided to 'make a difference' in Abadan. Abadan was one of the cities in which one could not organize a revolution against the Shah.

I also found out that the cinema they wanted to set on fire wasn't Cinema Rex at first. Four teachers from the Qom Koran School had jointly developed a plan to set fires in cinemas. One of the four was Sheikh Hossein Ali Montazeri . For Abadan, this plan was given to three people who then set the cinema on fire. Two of them died in the fire. One survived and had problems with his conscience because he had not realized beforehand what damage he would do and that the damage would be so great in the end.

I went to Khomeini and asked him how I could turn right into injustice when so many innocent people had been arrested and were facing the death sentence while the main culprits were now in high positions. I did not get an answer.

I was in the car to Mashhad when I heard that the wrongly accused by Abadan had been convicted and executed. I really cried. "

Sheikh Tehrani was living in exile in Iraq at the time of the interview.

Alireza Nourizadeh wrote in his book The Good Children of Amiriyeh (1995) that the then Information Minister Mohammad Reza Ameli-e Tehrani had the investigation file of the Cinema Rex case in hand. The file contained a confession by Abdul Reza Ashur, who lived in the border region between Iraq and Iran. Ashur testified that the order to set fire to a cinema in Abadan had come from Najaf to incite the residents of Khuzestan against Mohammad Reza Shah. In addition to him, Foad Karimi and a man named Kiavash, who later became governor, were also involved in preparing the attack. At the time of the arson attack, Khomeini was still in Najaf. On October 6, 1978, he was expelled from Iraq.

In the book "Poschte Pardehaja Enghelabe Eslami: Behind the Curtain of the Islamic Revolution", written by Hossein Boroujerdi and published by Bahram Choubine in 2002, Ali Chamene'i , the current political and religious leader of Iran, is named as the man who brought the fuel for the attack on the Cinema Rex to Abadan.

See also

• Black Friday (1978)

literature

• Masoud Mohid: Atashbiaran Dousakh - Vahshat-e Bozorg. (The Firemen from Hell - The Great Fear.) Persian, Iran Book, London 2009.
• Hossein Boroujerdi (author), Bahram Choubine (arrangement, editor): Poschte Pardehaja Enghelabe Eslami: Behind the curtain of the Islamic revolution. (Persian), 2002, ISBN 978-3-935249-66-9 .
• Shyda Nabavi: Abadan 28. Amordad 1357 Cinema Rex. In: Cheshmandaz No. 20. 1378 (1999).
• Report of a witness: Who are the real perpetrators of the Cinema Rex disaster. Enghelab-e Eslami dar Hejrat, nos. 104–115. Amordad - Day 1364.
• Anniversary of Cinema Rex Abadan. Special edition by Paykaar, 25th Amordad 1359.
• Javad Bischetab: The Black Catastrophe of Cinema Rex. Paris 1994, 143 pp.
• Parviz Sayyad: Documentary Game: The Court of Cinema Rex. First performed in 1987 in the USA. Released as a video in 1996.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gholam Reza Afkhami: The life and time of the Shah. University of California Press, 2008, p. 458.
2. ↑ The letter is printed in the newspaper Enghelab-e Eslami dar Hejrat No. 106.
3. ^ Payam-e Enghelab: Collection of messages and speeches by Imam Khomeini from MD Qajar. Payam-e Azadi, Vol. 1, 1341 - Sept. 1357, p. 264.
4. ↑ Gholam Reza Afkhami: The life and time of the Shah. University of California Press, 2008, p. 459.
5. ↑ Khomeini interview on September 14, 1978, Radio TV France in Paris. The reporter's question was: What are your views on the position of women, chador, attacks on cinemas and banks. Transcript published in Taliyeh Enghelab-e Eslami: Interviews with Imam Khomeini in Najaf. Paris, Qom, Tehran. Setad-e Enghelabe Farhangi University Publication Center, 1362, pp. 17-18.
6. ↑ 6. Shahrivar 1359. E-Telaat No. 16225. Quoted from: Nimrouz No. 278, 28. Mordad 1373.
7. ↑ Darius Homayun: Yesterday and Tomorrow. Washington 1981, p. 65.
8. ↑ Paykaar: Special edition for the anniversary of the Cinema Rex disaster, 25th Amordad 1359 p. 5.
9. ↑ Interview with Ali Reza Meybodi, Radio Voice Iran, USA. The transcript of the interview was published in Nimroz No. 277, Volume 6, Friday 21st Mordad 1373