Bahram Afzali
Afzali in summer 1980
Birth nameBahram Afzali Khoshkebijari[1]
Born6 December 1937
Qom, Imperial State of Iran
Died25 February 1984(1984-02-25) (aged 46)
Tehran, Iran
Service/branch Islamic Republic of Iran Navy
Years of service1957–1984
RankCaptain
Commands held Islamic Republic of Iran Navy
Battles/wars
Alma materItalian Naval Academy
University of Genoa

Bahram Afzali (Persian: بهرام افضلی; 1937–1984) was an Iranian admiral who served as the Commander of the Iranian Navy from May/June 1980 to 24 April 1983.[2] He was executed for his clandestine membership in the Tudeh Party of Iran in 1984.[2]

Career

Afzali was born in 1937[3] in the city of Qom.[2] His father was a cleric.[1] He entered the service of the Imperial Iranian Navy in 1957 and was sent to Italy for further education.[3] In 1961, he was graduated from Italian Naval Academy,[2] where he was trained in mechanical engineering and shipbuilding.[3] He later obtained a PhD in boat and submarine architecture in 1970.[2]

Afzali was an engineer and a captain in the Imperial Iranian Navy.[4] After the 1979 revolution, he continued to serve in the Navy and took part in the Iran–Iraq War.[4] Then Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr appointed him as the commander of the Navy in June 1980.[5] He was also special adviser of then speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.[6]

Arrest, trial and death

At the beginning of 1983, Afzali, along with more than a thousand members of the Tudeh Party was arrested by the IRP.[7] The trial carried out in the form of a military tribunal in December 1983, and 32 of them were sentenced to death.[8] Their judge was Hojjat Al Islam Mohammad Reyshahri, who also interrogated Mahdi Hashemi in 1986.[9] The location of the tribunal has been never revealed.[9]

Ten of these Tudeh members were executed.[8] On 25 February 1984, Afzali was executed on charges of espionage for the Soviet Union.[4][8][10]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Nikola B. Schahgaldian, Gina Barkhordarian (March 1987), The Iranian Military Under the Islamic Republic (PDF), RAND, p. 113, ISBN 0-8330-0777-7, retrieved 15 January 2017
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Boroujerdi, Mehrzad; Rahimkhani, Kourosh (2018). Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook. Syracuse University Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780815654322.
  3. 1 2 3 Iran Almanac and Book of Facts, vol. 18, Echo of Iran, 1987, p. 304
  4. 1 2 3 "Mr. Bahram Afzali". OMID. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
  5. ↑ "30 persons dead, 80 injured in Iranian-Iraqi frontier clash". The Calgary Herald. 2 June 1980. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
  6. ↑ Shireen T. Hunter; Jeffrey L. Thomas; Alexander Melikishvili (2004). Islam in Russia: The Politics of Identity and Security. M.E. Sharpe. p. 506. ISBN 978-0-7656-1282-3.
  7. ↑ George W. Breslauer (1990). Soviet Strategy in the Middle East. Unwin Hyman. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-04-445232-4.
  8. 1 2 3 Sepehr Zabir (2012). The Iranian Military in Revolution and War (RLE Iran D). CRC Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-136-81270-5.
  9. 1 2 Ervand Abrahamian (1999). Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran. University of California Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-520-21623-5.
  10. ↑ Hunter, Shireen T. (Spring 1987). "After the Ayatollah". Foreign Policy. 66 (66): 77–97. doi:10.2307/1148665. JSTOR 1148665.
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