Word: savak
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...followers attempted to stifle every vestige of opposition to the imposition of a Muslim theocracy. In so doing they set standards for brutality and injustice that at least equaled -- and probably surpassed -- the worst excesses of the Shah's regime. A clergy-dominated security system soon rivaled SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, in terror and bloodthirstiness...
...touch with the forces gathering against him. Resentment of his Western ways was fanned by the Muslim clergy. Intellectuals, students and professionals thought the figure posing in Ruritanian uniform and a Disneyland crown was not Western enough. These dissenters frequently attracted the attention of the security police (SAVAK), whose interview techniques shocked the world and hastened the coming of Ayatullah Khomeini's vengeful theocracy...
...Islam. If you go hand in hand with your wife, they will stop you and force you to show them your marriage license. If you do not have the document, you will be arrested." In the minds of many Iranians, the Revolutionary Guards have taken the place of SAVAK, the Shah's dreaded secret police...
...weekend jaunt to a nearby cave yields a dying man and then, in short order, a corpse for which none of the local authorities will accept responsibility. Chloe begins to suspect Hugh of working for the CIA, and numerous new acquaintances of being informers for SAVAK, the Shah's secret police. She rashly hands over her passport to an Iranian woman who wants to break out of her arranged marriage to an older man, thus giving the young wife a chance to flee the country without her husband's knowledge or approval. Jeffrey writes from San Francisco, saying...
This story is supported by Mansur Rafizadeh, a former high official in SAVAK, the Shah's secret police. Long a double agent serving both SAVAK and the CIA, Rafizadeh worked solely for the CIA after the Shah fell from power in 1979. According to Rafizadeh, Ghorbanifar first came to the CIA's attention in late 1980 when the Carter Administration was desperate to win the release of U.S. hostages from the seized American embassy in Tehran. George Cave, a retired CIA agent then working under a contract with the agency, asked Rafizadeh if Ghorbanifar could help. The former SAVAK agent...