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Last Saturday, Sayyad Shirazi, butcher of Kurdistan, was killed by several operational units of the Mojahedin as he was being escorted by a group of heavily armed Revolutionary Guards acting as his bodyguards.
Due to his countless crimes and his complete loyalty to the mullahs, Sayyad Shirazi rapidly rose through the ranks of the military. A summary of his criminal record follows:
1. In 1979, Khomeini appointed Sayyad Shirazi as the "commander for special operations in Iranian Kurdistan". He was responsible for repeated, indiscriminate shelling of many villages and cities in Iranian Kurdistan in 1979 and 1980. An army captain in 1979, he was promoted to colonel in a short span of time as a reward for his crimes.
2. Sayyad Shirazi was appointed as the commander of the regime’s ground forces in 1981. In that post, he purged the regular armed forces of its patriotic personnel, ordering the arrest, execution and dismissal of many of them.
3. Sayyad Shirazi played a direct role in sending thousands of high school students and youngsters to run over mine fields during the unpatriotic war with Iraq. In 1987, Khomeini appointed him as his personal representative in the regime’s Supreme Defense Council.
4. Several hours after NLA's Operation Eternal Light was launched in July 1988, Sayyad Shirazi was dispatched to Kermanshah on Khomeini’s orders. In an interview with the state-run television on July 28, 1998, Sayyad Shirazi admitted that many army officers and soldiers refused to confront the National Liberation Army. He personally boarded a helicopter gunship and fired on combatants of the NLA.
5. This henchman and his mercenaries also captured many NLA combatants and ruthlessly tortured, or raped, and finally executed them. After execution, they hanged their bodies from trees or left them on the side of the road to terrorize the public in the region.
His crimes amounted to specific war
crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mullahs' Officials Acknowledge Sayyad Shirazi's Criminal Record, Iran Zamin News Agency, April 12
1. Mullahs' Supreme Leader Khamenei, April 10: "His name and face recalled resistance against… counterrevolutionaries."
2. Firouzabadi, the Armed Forces' General Command Staff Commander, State television, April 12: "it must be said that uprooting counterrevolutionaries in Sardasht, Sanandaj…, and other regions of Kurdistan was carried out under his command."
3. State television, April 10: "After the victory of the Revolution, with a Bassiji-like morale, Sayyad Shirazi played a key role in the transformation of the armed forces."
[Sayyad Shirazi's "key role" in the "transformation of the armed forces," is a reference to the purging and executions of thousands of patriotic personnel of the Armed Forces.]
4. Official news agency IRNA, April 10: "Among his most important tasks was to prepare operational plans for Kurdistan which resulted in breaking the encirclement of the cities of Sanandaj, the Marivan Garrison, the towns of Baneh and Saqez."
[The reference by IRNA is to the large-scale attacks by the forces under Sayyad Shirazi's command and the indiscriminate shelling and bombing of cities and villages in Iranian Kurdistan as a result of which thousands of defenseless people, including women and children were ruthlessly killed.]
5. Sayyad Shirazi, interview with the state-television, July 28, 1998 (rebroadcast April 10, 1999): "The most sinister of our enemies, the Mojahedin, who were also our filthiest enemies were in possession of modern equipment. They were advancing toward Kermanshah… I was present on the scene from the time they came in until their annihilation… we suddenly saw the sinister Mojahedin whom we were pursuing one by one to punish, were now being killed in group after group by us."
No doubts remain, therefore, that on the basis of international conventions, including the 1948 Geneva Convention, Maj. Gen. Ali Sayyad Shirazi, had committed genocide, was a war criminal and perpetrated crimes against humanity.
As the Iranian Resistance has repeatedly
stated, all of its operations are undertaken in the framework of the Geneva
Conventions and only directed at military targets and the regime's armed
forces who are directly involved in the massacre and suppression of the
Iranian people. Consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
rebellion "as a last recourse" against the religious fascism ruling Iran,
is the legitimate right of the Iranian people.
Khatami Lambastes Middle East Peace Process, Agence France Presse, April 12
TEHRAN - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami hit out Monday at the Middle East peace process, and said Iran would "never recognize" the State of Israel.
"The Middle East compromise process" is "void from a legal, political and ideological point of view, and will never be effective," Khatami was quoted by the official IRNA news agency.