Sardar Mohammed Aziz Khan

Sardar Mohammed Aziz Khan

Sardar Muhammed Aziz Khan (* 1875, 1877 or 1878 in Dehradun , today India, †  June 6, 1933 in Berlin ) was an Afghan diplomat . In 1933, as envoy in Berlin, he fell victim to an attack that was widely publicized at the time.

Live and act

Aziz Khan came from the Musaheban family, a subclan of the Baraksai . He was the eldest of five sons of Prince Yahya Khan. His younger (half) brother Mohammed Nadir Shah - the second oldest of the five - became the new King of Afghanistan in 1929 after a violent uprising against the then King Habibullah Kalakâni . Before that, Khan had lived in exile in India with some of his brothers.

Around 1930 Aziz Khan was sent by his brother as envoy to Moscow before he came to Berlin in 1932 as envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Afghan Government. One of his sons was ambassador to Rome at the same time .

In Berlin, at noon on June 6, 1933, Sayed Kamal (born September 18, 1900), a young Afghan nationalist who lived as a student at the Technical University or, according to other sources, as an engineer in Berlin, assassinated Aziz Khan: Kamal fired in the stairwell of the Afghan embassy on Hansaplatz (Lessingstrasse) fired several shots with a revolver at the envoy when he wanted to leave the building for a walk. While most of the bullets missed their target, one shot hit the diplomat above the heart, so that he died soon after his admission to the Moabit hospital . Kamal, who was seized by Aziz's companions and handed over to the police, stated during interrogation by the Gestapo that he had committed the act out of rejection of the policy of his government being closer to Britain .

In July 1934, Kamal was found guilty of murder by the jury at the Berlin Regional Court and sentenced to death. After lengthy diplomatic disputes over extradition to Afghanistan, he was executed in Berlin in 1935.

The successor to Aziz Khan as envoy in Berlin came - after a vacancy of almost two years - Allah Nawaz Khan in 1935 .

Aziz Khan's son Daoud Khan served as Prime Minister from 1953 to 1963 and as President of Afghanistan from 1973 to 1978.

literature

• Berliner Illustrierte night edition from June 6, 1933.
• “Death penalty for the murderer of the Afghan envoy”, in: Berliner Illustrierte night edition of July 7, 1934.
• Tobias C. Bringmann : Handbuch der Diplomatie 1815–1963 , 2001.
• Bernd Fischer: Between Wilhelmstrasse and Bellevue. 500 years of diplomacy in Berlin , 1998.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Berliner Illustrierte night edition of June 6, 1933.