Word: bakhtiar
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Logically, in light of the previous week's assassination attempt against former Prime Minister Bakhtiar in a Paris suburb, the Washington slaying aroused speculation that the long arm of revolutionary vengeance had reached all the way from Iran. Police officials, so far, have no concrete evidence to link the crime to Tehran. But one thing is certain: Salahuddin was a devout believer in Khomeini's gospel of killing one's enemies...
...Bakhtiar, the last Prime Minister of the former Shah, allegedly figured at the center of the aborted "Zionist-Iraqi-U.S." plot. According to President Abolhassan Banisadr, the conspirators intended to occupy two Iranian airbases and bomb a number of strategic targets. Among them: Khomeini's home north of Tehran, the Tehran International Airport and Faizieh religious school in the holy city of Qum. Tehran spokesmen charged that the plotters hoped to tell Iranians over radio and television that "the patriotic army of Iran has overthrown the rotten government of the mullahs," and then invite Bakhtiar back from...
...week's end the roundup had netted more than 500 suspects, including two of Bakhtiar's cousins, Abbas Qoli Bakhtiar and Samsam Bakhtiar, and the Shah's former Health Minister, Anoushiravan Pouyan. The closed-door trial began on Saturday at the Military Revolutionary Tribunal in Tehran. Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti, the hard-lining president of the Supreme Court, had previously announced that "the plotters are facing the death penalty." There seemed little doubt that his grim threat would be carried out with the same judicial severity that sent 42 other Iranians to their death last week...
Even before his narrow escape from assassination, Bakhtiar vigorously denied charges that he had masterminded the aborted coup. He nonetheless professed full sympathy for its aims. "It is the natural right of a people, when they are deprived of freedom, of human rights, to rebel," he said. "It was an insurrection. It was not a plot. It is Khomeini himself who is pushing people to revolt." Bakhtiar, who has been an active leader of the anti-Khomeini forces among Iranian exiles in Europe, had no choice but to deny involvement. To do otherwise might jeopardize the political asylum that...
...Bakhtiar's implication was also affirmed in a series of dramatic televised confessions by some of the alleged conspirators, including Colonel Nader Vahdatipour and retired Brigadier General Ayatullah Mohaqqeqi. Vahdatipour said the plot had originally been based on the military's desire to save Iran from Communism. The conspirators, he added, got in touch with Bakhtiar only after forming their own clandestine organization...