Kazem Darabi

Kazem Darabi

Kazem Darabi Kazeruni (* 1964 in Kazerun / Iran , Persian کاظم دارابى) is an Iranian secret service employee who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Berlin Court of Appeal , who represented the Hezbollahi in Germany in the 1990s and is considered to be the mastermind behind the Mykonos attack in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . On December 10, 2007, Darabi was released early after 15 years in prison and then deported to Iran.

Life

Darabi was born in Iran as the son of a businessman and a housewife. He grew up with two brothers in Tehran and finished school with a secondary school leaving certificate. After the revolution , he joined the newly established Iranian Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran) and underwent military training in one of their camps near the city of Rasht . Despite his lack of knowledge of German, Darabi probably traveled to the Federal Republic of Germany on April 1, 1980 on a student visa . A short time after his arrival in September 1980 to March 1981, he took a six-month German course with a subsequent internship. To obtain his university entrance qualification, he completed two semesters in the winter of 1981/1982 and then in the summer of 1982 at the Hagen University of Applied Sciences . On April 24, 1982 he took part in the attack on Inter 1 in Mainz and was in custody for deportation between July 21, 1982 and October 14, 1982 due to an eviction order . However, Iran intervened in his favor, whereupon he received a tolerance that secured his continued stay in Germany. In the spring of 1983 he moved to Berlin to study civil engineering in the winter semester 1983/84 at the technical college . At the end of 1985 he married the sister of his future business partner, with whom he ran a grocery store and ironing shop in the Berlin district of Neukölln . Darabi probably received the money for the purchase of the business premises from employees of the Iranian embassy, ​​for which he worked as a secret service. Darabi moved into two apartments, one on Detmolder Straße in the Berlin district of Wilmersdorf , where he temporarily accommodated Iranian businessmen and clergy on visits to Germany, and another apartment in Weserstraße in the Berlin district of Neukölln, where he and his wife of Lebanese origin and three children (two daughters, the elder of whom has a physical disability, and a son) lived.

Activities in Berlin

Since 1983 Darabi has been working on behalf of the Iranian Secret Service ( VEVAK ) in the Association of Islamic Students Berlin-West eV, in which supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran have gathered. From 1984 he was on the board of the association and in the umbrella organization of the Union of Islamic Student Associations in Europe (UISA). For in Berlin's Gesundbrunnen located Shiite Imam Jaafar Sadiq - Mosque Darabi received by the Iranian Embassy and the line was responsible for the organization of several major events in the Berlin area. Among other things, he organized the annual Ashura celebrations and the demonstrations on al-Quds Day . Darabi received Iranian funds every day, which he used accordingly.

His most important secret service activities included spying on opponents of the Tehran regime and reporting to the Iranian authorities about opposition groups such as the People's Mujahedin or the supporter of the Kurdistan Democratic Party ( DPK-I ) who were murdered in the Mykonos attack . Furthermore, Darabi was considered by Iranian-Lebanese Hezbollah supporters in Germany as the representative and head of the Berlin branch of Hezbollah and editor of an Arabic - Persian-language student newspaper called AI Wahda ("The Unit"). Darabi organized many counter-demonstrations at events directed against the Iranian regime by exiled Iranians and opposition groups, which repeatedly resulted in violent attacks by Iranian-Lebanese Hezbollah supporters against opposition groups. Among friends and visitors to the Imam-Jaffar Sadiq Mosque, Darabi was also known by the nickname Al- Hajj due to his pilgrimage to Mecca in August 1992 . In addition to Persian , Darabi speaks fluent Turkish and Arabic .

Arrest and conviction

Darabi was on October 8, 1992 due to the arrest warrant of the investigating judge of the Federal Court detained provisionally and was until his conviction by the Berlin Court of Appeal in April 1997 in the prison in Berlin-Moabit in custody . After three and a half years of trial , Darabi and another accomplice , the Lebanese Abbas Rhayel , were sentenced to life imprisonment in the Tegel correctional facility . In November 2003 there was a transfer from the detention center Darabi Berlin-Tegel to the prison Dresden on preventive detention in solitary confinement . Accordingly, it became known that Darabi was able to set up the first organizational structures between the mostly Arab inmates within the Tegel prison. According to their statements, Darabi, who was always referred to by the inmates by the nickname Abu Mehdi, was considered a person of respect and was extremely popular. During the investigation of his cell by a special police unit ( SEK ), an illegally smuggled mobile phone was found, with which Darabi is said to have telephoned while in custody. According to the authorities, this lead led to suspicion of the formation of a criminal organization within the prison on the part of Darabis and his risk of escape with the ensuing security measures.

Dismissal and deportation

On October 11, 2007, the Federal Public Prosecutor announced to the Federal Court of Justice as the enforcement authority that according to § 456a StPO in connection with an expulsion of Darabis in Iran after 15 years of imprisonment, the further enforcement of the prison sentence would not be carried out. On December 10, 2007, Darabi was flown to Iran. At Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport , in the presence of the Iranian press IRNA and IRIB, he was welcomed by his family and the Deputy Director General for Europe in the Iranian Foreign Ministry and other politically high-ranking representatives of the regime and honored as a "hero of the nation". In a press conference on the same day in front of domestic and foreign journalists, Darabi denied all of the criminal offenses accused of him and announced a book he had written in German about his conviction and democracy in the FRG , which has not yet been published.

Web links

• (PDF file; 20 kB) ( Memento from May 25, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
• Mykonos bomber relocated , Tagesspiegel from November 20, 2003
• Chancellery does not rule out the release from prison of Iranian Darabi: will Mykonos terrorist be released?

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Release from prison: Iranian "Mykonos" assassin Darabi is released. In: Spiegel Online . October 11, 2007, accessed June 10, 2018 . 
2. ^ Ansgar Graw: Mykonos assassination attempt: Relatives fear deal with Tehran. In: welt.de . December 10, 2007, accessed October 7, 2018 .