This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was part of a death squad that killed three Kurds in Austria, according to Green party security spokesman Peter Pilz. He said Ahmadinejad had been involved in the killings in Vienna in 1989 and may have pulled the trigger on one of the guns used to kill the men.

Pilz said new eye-witnesses had come forward who had identified Ahmadinejad as being involved in the assassination of Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran chief Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, his deputy Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar and Austrian-born Fadel Rasoul on 13 July 1989. He said a German weapons dealer had told Austrian investigators there had been a meeting in the Iranian embassy in Vienna during the first week of July 1989 at which a certain “Mohamed” who later became president of Iran had been present.

The dealer said the purpose of the embassy meeting had been to discuss illegal arms deliveries. Pilz claimed there had been two Iranian teams involved in the assassinations - a negotiations team and an execution team. Pilz said Ahmadinejad had been responsible for gathering and preparing the weapons used and had been a member of the execution team. Pilz said he had passed on documents on the case that had been translated into German to the interior ministry and the state prosecutor’s office.

Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr has also claimed Ahmadinejad had belonged to the execution team in Vienna, and a number of media reports implicated him in the murder of the three Kurds. The Iranians suspected of having killed the Kurds took refuge in the Iranian embassy after the murders and were allowed to leave Austria after the Austrian government came under massive pressure from the Iranian government.

The Greens spokesman called for a foreign-policy initiative to support democratic forces in Iran and warned: “A president who has probably engaged in massive election fraud, been responsible for the deaths of many journalists and Kurds in Iran and strongly suspected of murder in Vienna is not someone capable of respecting democracy and human rights. The European Union should not consider him credible.”

In another Iran-related development, a court case in Vienna against eleven individuals who demonstrated against former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami ended in acquittal for ten of them and a fine for one.

On October 27, 2008 Khatami delivered a lecture at Vienna University. About 25 demonstrators tried to enter the small auditorium; plainclothes policemen and the security service of the University did not let them in, resulting in jostling and shoving.

Khatami spoke despite a letter from political scientist Alexander Gruber informing the president and vice president of Vienna University about the actions of this so-called moderate. For example, when Khatami was president, dozens of gay men were hanged, among them 16 year-old Mahmoud Asgari and 18 year-old Ayaz Marhoni. The two minors were hanged on July 20, 2005 in Mashhad on a building crane.

Khatami justified those executions like this:

“We’re at a university, the cradle of science, so we can speak of it scientifically. In all schools of thought and in all religions there is punishment and punishment is not a form of violence. Punishment is seen as a response to violence or deviance in society and if there is no punishment in a society a society cannot run effectively (…) As an expert of Islamic sciences I tell you that capital punishment is accepted in Islam (…) So yes you are correct homosexual activity is a crime in Islam. And crimes are punishable. (…) And that we must differentiate between punishment and violence.”

Khatami has also spoken out against women’s emancipation:

“One of the major mistakes in the West has been women’s emancipation which has disintegrated the family… Staying in the home does not mean being pushed to the sidelines. Looking after the home does not prevent one from a say in the destiny… We must not think that being social beings means having work outside the home. Housekeeping is among the most important tasks.” Salaam, May 11, 1997

Khatami described Israel during a meeting with Jordanian politicians when he was president as a “plague” and “the greatest enemy of Islam and humanity.” Iranian state radio quoted the president as saying during the meeting that in order” to resist this plague there is no solution except for unity among Muslim countries.”

It really beggars belief. When Iranian agents assassinated three Kurdish politicians in the center of Vienna, they were escorted by the Austrian police to the airport and never accused them of murder. But when a few young people wanted to ask some questions at Vienna University, the police were called and they found themselves in court.

Ben Cohen adds: Austrian police have said that they will now investigate the charges against Ahmadinejad.