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 About
Age 45 Nationality France Religion — Civil status Single Education — Occupation — Rank/Position — Affiliation —
Case Date of execution July 8, 1980 Location Paris, France Mode of execution extrajudicial-shooting Charges Unspecified offense About this Case
Yvonne Stein is one of two individuals killed during the assassination attempt of Shapour Bakhtiar, which took place on July 18, 1980 in the suburb of Paris, Neuilly sur Seine.
The information concerning this assassination attempt was collected by the French press
(Le Figaro July 19, 1980, France Soir July 18,1980 and July 19,1980, Le Monde July 19, 1980, February 27, 1982, March 5, 1982, March 12, 1982, L’Express from June 14 to June 20, 1980 and of July 26, 1980 to August 1, 1980).
A five-member terrorist commando group composed of: Anis Naccache, a Lebanese Christian; Nejad Tabrizi, an Iranian member of the Revolutionary Guards Corp; Fawzi El Satari, a Palestinian; along with Salah Eddine El Kaara and Mohamed Jenab, either Syrian or Lebanese according to different sources, carried out the July 18, 1980 attack at the apartment building in Neuilly sur Seine where Shapour Bakhtiar resided.
The commando group arrived at the building at 8:45 am, carrying silencer guns and press cards from the newspaper L’Humanité (affiliated to the French Communist Party). The police officers assigned to Bakhtiar’s protection allowed them to enter lobby where another office was in charge of informing Bakhtiar of visitors using the intercom. Before he could call Bakhtiar’s apartment, the guard was shot. The commando group reached the second floor, where Bakhtiar’s apartment was located, and mistakenly knocked on his neighbor’s door. The commando shot Yvonne Stein dead as soon as she opened the door and also wounded her sister. When the commando finally rang the door bell of Bakhtiar’s apartment, the latter’s cousin, suspicious of the early-hour visit, attached the door’s security chain before opening it. The commando shot through the door crack but failed to gain access to the apartment and complete its mission.
The members of the commando group were arrested as they were leaving the building. They were detained and interrogated by the French police. At all stages of the judicial process, they claimed responsibility for their acts. They were charged with murder by the Criminal Court of Hauts de Seine, which held its hearings from February 5 to March 10, 1982. The accused refused to attend their trial (except for one hearing), deeming the Court incompetent, since, according to them, ‘only Allah is a judge’. All the members of the commando were sentenced to life imprisonment except for Fawzi El Satari who was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.
Yvonne Stein’s name is in OMID along with victims of violations of human rights by the Islamic Republic of Iran, because the available information indicates that she was shot by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the course of the assassination attempt against Shapur Bakhtiar. Responsibility for the assassination attempt was claimed by Iranian authorities.
During the only hearing he attended, the head of the commando group, Naccache, argued that the assassination plan was based on a verdict issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal in Tehran. (Le Monde, March 10, 1982)
Responsibility for Shapour Bakhtiar’s assassination attempt was claimed immediately on July 19, 1980 in a communiqué issued by the Revolutionary Guards and read on the official Radio-Tehran.
In an interview given to Express magazine and published during the week of June 14-20, 1980, Ayatollah Khalkhali, designated by Khomeini as the Head of the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal, stated that Bakhtiar was on his blacklist and that a commando group was in charge of killing him (p 141).
Le Figaro on July 19, 1980, also mentioned the list including Bakhtiar’s name as well as some relatives of the former Shah. Khalkhali said: "I have sent a commando to get him, he can not escape us".
Furthermore, in an interview given to the newspaper Le Monde on December 1, 1992, Anis Naccache explained that "At the time, killing the former Prime Minster of the Shah was a political necessity and was legally justified".
Anis Naccache made the headline news again during a bombing campaign that hit France between February 1985 and May 1986 killing 14 and injuring 335 people. Responsibility for these attacks was claimed by Islamist groups close to the Lebanese Hezbollah, to whom the Islamic Republic provides ideological guidance and logistical support. In their claims, those responsible for the bombings called for the liberation of three individuals imprisoned in France, including Anis Naccache of the Jihad (Didier Bigo in Culture and Conflicts n°4 (1992) pp. 147-173).
On July 27, 1990, President Mitterand pardoned Anis Naccache, the leader of the commando group and his accomplices. Naccache left for Tehran and has reportedly lived between the Iranian capital and Beirut ever since. On August 6, 1991 Shapour Bakhtiar, and his assistant, Soroush Katibeh, were assassinated in in Suresnes (a Paris suburb where Bakhtiar moved after the 1980 attempt on his life). The assassination was carried out by members of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards Corp.
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Human rights violations in this caseThe legal context
Read about the courts, the judges, and the procedure. The courts
Special courts, known as the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunals, were set up after the February 1979 revolution. Their jurisdiction encompasses a wide array of offences ranging from association with or support of the former regime, promotion of foreign influence, and enmity with the revolution to possession, use or sales of narcotic drugs, murder, and profiteering. In the 1980s, a penal court, presided over by one judge, was created to handle some of the offenses punishable by death, such as theft or adultery. These tribunals’ decisions must be confirmed by a chamber of the Supreme Judicial Council.
The judges
Prosecutors and judges are not necessarily jurists. By 1981, the judiciary was purged of judges trained in law schools. They were replaced by seminary graduates and students, as well as by political appointees (an estimated 2000 by 1989). Since by law judges are only required to have a high school diploma and must be faithful to the Islamic Republic’s tenets, new recruits often have little formal training in the law and are chosen because of their political affiliation.
The procedure
The procedures of these ecclesiastical tribunals fail to meet the minimum guarantees for fair trial as established by international human rights instruments and by sha’ria (the Islamic system of law). In addition to executions ordered by revolutionary tribunals, extra-judicial executions are carried out, targeting dissidents and opposition leaders. In some cases, both inside and outside of Iran, these executions have been traced back to Iranian officials. It is, however, not known if in these particular cases trials are held in absentia.
Sources (Among others): Amnesty International, Law and Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, February 1980; Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, The Justice System of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1992; E/CN.4/1989/26 p.14; UNCHR, Resolution 1984/54 , Abolition of Torture - Iran - 1; 28 November 1984; Report on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Special Representative of the Commission, Mr. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, 28 January 1987. Amnesty International, A SHOCKED WORLD WATCHES IN DISBELIEF, VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 1987-1990. Memoirs of Ayatollah Khalkhali, religious judge and former head of revolutionary tribunals (2001), and Ayatollah Montazeri, dismissed successor to Ayatollah Khomeini (2001). UNCH, E/CN.4/1994/50, Final report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran prepared by the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, pursuant to Commission resolution 1993/62 of 10 March 1993 and Economic and Social Council decision 1993/273. E/CN.4/1994/50, 2 February 1994.
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 close... Extrajudicial killings and the Islamic Republic: A decades-long pattern
Read more about the pattern of extrajudicial killings ordered by the Islamic Republic authorities.
Since the inception of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights, have blamed the Islamic regime for the extrajudicial killing of its opponents, both within and outside of its borders. Although over two hundred cases have been reported, the exact number of victims remains unknown.
Extrajudicial executions carried out in Iran are rarely investigated; the few cases that have been investigated have indicated that the Iranian state security apparatus has been involved. Agents of the Islamic Republic have also targeted dissidents outside the country, assassinating opposition members in the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Dubai, Iraq, and Turkey in the Middle East; Cyprus, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain in Western Europe; and across the Atlantic in the United States,.
In many of these cases local authorities have made no arrests. However, investigations, when they have taken place and been made public, have led to the single hypothesis of State ordered crimes. The organization and execution of these crimes constitute a pattern that Swiss prosecutor Roland Chatelain describes as “common parameters” following a “meticulous preparation.” Similarities between different cases in different countries have created a coherent set of presumptions designating the Islamic Republic as the instigator of these assassinations. In cases involving prominent Iranians assassinated in France, Germany, and Switzerland, local prosecutors have provided evidence linking Iranian authorities to the crimes in question. In France, for example, the Iranian Deputy Minister of Telecommunications has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the 1991 murder of two dissidents. In Germany, agents of Iran's secret services and Lebanese Hezbollah have been convicted for the 1992 murder of four dissidents in Berlin. Currently, the Islamic Republic's Minister of Information and Security at the time of this murder is under an International arrest Warrant launched by German judicial authorities for his involvement. Furthermore, the German court found that Iran's political leadership ordered the murder through a "Committee for Special Operations," whose members reportedly include the Leader of the Islamic Republic, the President, the Minister of Information and Security, and other security officials.
The Islamic Republic’s officials have claimed responsibility for some of these assassinations while denying involvement in others. In the 1980s, Iranian authorities justified extrajudicial executions of dissidents and members of the former regime and actively worked for the release of Iranians and non-Iranian agents who were detained or convicted in the West for their involvement in those killings. During the 1990s, they systematically denied any involvement in extrajudicial killings and often credited the killings to infighting amongst the opposition. Still, the rationale supporting these killings was articulated as early as in the spring of 1979 when the First Revolutionary religious judge publicly announced the regime's intention to carry out extrajudicial executions. He said: “no state has the right to try as a terrorist the person who kills [exiles] in foreign lands, for this person is implementing the verdict issued by the Islamic Revolutionary tribunal.” More than a decade later, in August, 1992, the Minister of Intelligence and Security publicly boasted about the success of Iran's security forces, alluding to the elimination of dissidents: "We have been able to deal blows to many of the mini-groups outside the country and on the borders...."
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close... Based on the available information, the following human rights have been violated in this case:
The right to liberty and security of the person. The right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 9.1. The right not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation.
UDHR, Article 12, ICCPR, Article 17.1. The right not to be punished for any crime on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence, under national or international law, at the time it was committed.
UDHR, Article 11.2; ICCPR, Article 15, Article 6.2. The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to change and manifest one’s religion or belief.
UDHR, Article 18; ICCPR, Article 18.1, ICCPR, Article 18.2; Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, Article 1 and Article 6.
In its general comment 22 (48) of 20 July 1993, the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee observed that the freedom to "have or to adopt" a religion or belief necessarily entailed the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views, as well as the right to retain one's religion or belief. Article 18, paragraph 2, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights bars coercion that would impair the right to have or adopt a religion or belief, including the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers to adhere to religious beliefs and congregations, to recant their religion or belief or to convert. The right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas.
UDHR, Article 19; ICCPR, Article 19.1 and ICCPR, Article 19.2.
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