The two trials couldn’t
be more dissimilar, and it’s not because our legal systems are
different.
In federal district court in Washington, D.C., this morning, an
Iranian torture victim will be seeking justice against Iranian
leaders, whom he alleges were legally responsible for the jailors
who¬Ýhanged him upside down during interrogation sessions
and beat him repeatedly on the soles of the feat with an electric
cable.
In the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris on February 22, a French
court will rule on a complaint filed by the Government of Iran and
the government-owned Bank Sepah against three Iranian opposition
activists whose assets have been frozen since 1995 after they
infiltrated the bank and got the Paris bank manager to defect.
The case in Washington, D.C., names as defendants the former
president of Iran, Hojjat-ol eslam Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the
smiling turban many Democrats in Congress are promoting as a leader
we can do business with, and Ali Akbar Fallahian Khuzestani, the
former head of Iran’s intelligence service.
It has been brought by the Mission for Establishment of Human Rights
in Iran (MEHR IRAN), a non-profit group in California,
on
behalf of torture
victim Gholam Nikbin.
While it is too early to know how Judge John Bates will rule in this
case, what’s certain is that the U.S. justice system honors the
victims of torture and of state-sponsored terrorism.
What’s certain in the French case is the monumental cynicism of
the French government of Jacques Chirac, which has cozied up to the
mullahs in Tehran and done their bidding ever since Mr. Chirac was
first elected in 1995.
In Washington, victims of Iranian terror will get their day in court.
In Paris, they will be prosecuted.
At one point, the Iranian regime hired as their lawyer to pursue the
opposition activists the daughter of Chirac crony and former
Transportation minister, Bernard Pons.
It would be hard to find a more clear-cut case of a political
show-trial, which the French have put on as a friendly gesture to the
Islamic Republic of Iran.
The defendants in Paris are leaders of a non-violent Marxist group,
the People’s Fedaii Guerilllas. The Fedaii have a strong track
record of activism against the regime. While I find their ideology
foolish, they are a legitimate political force inside Iran and have
shown their willingness to work in a coalition with other non-violent
Iranian political groups to help bring down a murderous regime.
They have also demonstrated extraordinary skill at penetrating the
regime’s intelligence and money-laundering networks, and that
is why the regime – and the French – are determined to
crush them.
In 1998, they briefly seized the Iranian consulate in Geneva (no one
was hurt and no weapons were used), and called television news
cameras to the scene as they dumped Top Secret documents out the
windows.
In other operations, they have acquired internal regime documents
that expose the corruption of top officials, including evidence they
turned over to the United Nations Security Council in 1996 that
revealed secret oil deals between the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
Corps and Saddam Hussein, in violation of the UN oil embargo. This
was the beginning of the UN Oil for Food scandal.
One of the documents, which I reproduced in the appendix to
Countdown
to Crisis, was a
bank guarantee from the Union de Banques Arabes et Françaises
in Paris, showing that the Revolutionary Guards sold a shipment of
Iraqi oil to the Al Shamal Islamic Bank in Sudan, in which Osama bin
Laden had an ownership stake.
Not only was Saddam cooperating with the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards, but both of them had a business relationship with Osama Bin
Laden in the mid-1990s. (And yes, the CIA missed that one, just as
they have missed so much else.)
In 1998, the Fedaii provided the Israeli government with information
on five Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah in South Lebanon on orders
of the Iranian regime, and were thanked publicly by the father of
Yehuda Katz (one of the five).
In 1995, the manager of the Paris branch of Bank Sepah defected to
the Fedaii, bringing with him documents that revealed how the Iranian
government was using the bank to pay commissions on arms and aircraft
deals.
Some of the documents were highly embarrassing for the French
government. One set detailed negotiations to purchase RASIT
ground-surveillance radar from Thomson-CSF. Others provided details
of negotiations for three Airbus A330 airliners.
Information provided by the bank manager indicated that these
contracts included large kickbacks paid to Iranian government
officials –standard practice for the Iranians. (In December
2006, AFP reported¬Ýthat
French energy giant Total was under investigation by a French court
over allegations it paid $80 million in bribes to obtain a $2 billion
contract to develop the South Pars gas field in 1997).
The bank manager also revealed that the Iranian regime was using Bank
Sepah to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through front
companies it controlled in Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands,
and to finance purchases from North Korea via a shadowy World Bank of
Christ the Saviour Cathedral that was controlled by a naturalized
French citizen of Russian origin.
To shut down these tremendously damaging leaks, the Iranian embassy
sued in a Paris court, alleging that the bank manager, Hedayat
Ashtari Larki, embezzled $12,399,450 from the bank. The French
government then agreed to file criminal charges against Ashtari Larki
and three Fedaii leaders.
On Nov. 21, 2002, at the request of Bank Sepah, the 12th Chamber of
the Tribunal of Grande Instance de Paris handed down a default
judgment against the three Fedaii members for fraud. The court
ordered them to pay damages and interests, seized their property, and
gave them one year suspended sentences.
The French court acknowledged the political nature of the case. “The
only certitudes [of the case] stem from a technical
evaluation” of banking documents “made in the deposition
of Mr. Berte, advisor and second director of the Bank Sepah,”
the court stated.
In other words, the French court jailed and seized the property of an
Iranian opposition group, solely based on the claims of the Iranian
regime.
The Bank Sepah used to operate several branches in the United States,
but was effectively shut down several years ago. Just last month, the
Treasury Department identified
Bank Sepah as “the financial linchpin of Iran's missile
procurement network,”¬Ýand enacted new regulations
aimed at cutting off their access to the international financial
system.
The U.S. move came in response to UN Security Council resolution
1737, which called on UN members to ban financial transactions that
could assist Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Yet in France, the Chirac government is not only allowing Bank Sepah
to continue to operate unfettered. It is helping the bank to crush a
legitimate opposition group through the French courts at the same
time Chirac is seeking
to sabotage the Iran
sanctions.
Memo to French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy: Here is a
simple, cost-free gesture you can make that will increase pressure on
the regime in Tehran, win friends in Washington and Tel Aviv, while
not jeopardizing the national interests of France.
Call your friends at the Ministry of Justice and ask them to quash
the Bank Sepah case.
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