Kazem Rajavi

Who was Kazem Rajavi?

Dr. Kazem Rajavi was a renowned human rights advocate and elder brother of Iranian opposition leader Massoud Rajavi. He engaged in international endeavors to defend human rights in Iran. At the age of 56, he held six doctorate degrees in the fields of law, political science, and sociology from the universities of Paris and Geneva.

Kazem Rajavi was Iran's first Ambassador to the United Nations headquarters in Geneva following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Shortly after his appointment, he resigned his post in protest to the “repressive policies and terrorist activities of the ruling clerics in Iran”. He then intensified his campaign against mass executions, arbitrary arrests, and torture carried out by Iran’s theocratic leadership.

He became the representative of the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran in Switzerland where he was a Geneva university professor. On 24 April 1990, he was gunned down in broad daylight by several agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran as he was driving to his home in Coppet, a village near Geneva.

Rajavi's assassination required enormous resources, extensive planning, and coordination among several of the regime's organizations. After extensive investigations, Roland Chatelain, the Swiss magistrate in charge of the case, and Swiss judicial and police officials confirmed the role of Iran's government under Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the participation of thirteen official agents of the Iranian regime who had used "service passports" to enter Switzerland for their plot