[custom_adv] Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930 – 1989) was a politician and Kurdish leader. Ghassemlou was the Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) from 1973 until his assassination in 1989 by individuals suspected of being agents of the homeland. [custom_adv] Born in Rezaieh, West Azerbaijan, homeland to a wealthy feudal family, his father was Mohammad Vesugh Ghassemlou, a landowning Kurdish nationalist Agha and Khan from the Kurdish Shekak tribe who was born in 1875. His mother was Nana Jan Timsar, an Assyrian Christian. His father was an adviser to the Shah of Iran, who gave him the title "Wussuq-e Divan. [custom_adv] " He completed his early education in Urmia and then on Tehran. He witnessed the era of the Republic of Mahabad and became a co-founder member of the youth wing of KDP-I at the age of 15. Ghassemlou moved to France to continue his studies at the Sorbonne. [custom_adv] He met his wife Helen Krulich in Czechoslovakia. They had two daughters together, Mina (1953) and Hewa (1955).Abd-al-Raḥmān Qāsemlu was fluent in 8 languages; Kurdish, Persian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, French, English, Czech, and Russian. [custom_adv] He was also familiar with German, Slovak, and Polish. Ghassemlou went back to Kurdistan in 1952 after completing his studies. He then spent several years as an active militant in the Kurdish military fields.[citation needed] In 1973, during the Third Congress of the PDKI, he was elected to the position of secretary general of the party, a position to which he was reelected several times until his assassination. [custom_adv] In 1979, his party supported the revolution which ended in the fall of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Khomeini considered their last hour participation in the revolution as "opportunistic". [custom_adv] Kurds belonging to the party had overtaken the military compounds in the Kurdish areas. Khomeini demanded all armed groups to become part of one revolutionary organization and demanded that Kurdish soldiers "return" their weapons. Ghasemlou demanded autonomy for Kurds and refused to lay down weapons. The party boycotted the referendum for the new constitution. [custom_adv] Following two bloody confrontation between Kurdish people and forces loyal to Khomeini, the Kurdish struggle turned into a war. Shortly, after the beginning of the armed Kurdish rebellion, Ayatollah Khomeini declared a "holy war" against the PDKI and Kurdistan. [custom_adv] This was the start of confrontation of the party and the new state, which ended in a military defeat of the Kurdish rebels. In 1982 Ghassemlou, attempted to overthrow the Shia clerics in an alliance with the former and dismissed president of homeland Abolhassan Banisadr, but Banisadr declined to join his pro-Kurdish alliance due to ambitions for independence among the Kurds. [custom_adv] The armed conflict continued up to 1984 in the middle of Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) where both countries supported the freedom fighters in each other's territory. [custom_adv] After the defeat of the armed rebellion, Ghassemlou settled in Paris and joined the National Council of Resistance of Iran that was founded by the PDKI and other opposition forces: the Islamist-Marxist People's Mujahedin, the liberal-leftist National Democratic Front, the United Left of small socialist groupings, and the independent Islamist-leftist former president of Iran Abolhassan Bani Sadr, in October 1981. [custom_adv] In 1988, after the war had ended, the Iran government decided to meet with him. Several meetings followed in Vienna, on 28 December, 30 December and 20 January 1989. Another meeting was set up for 13 July, again in Vienna. [custom_adv] The Tehran delegation was as before, namely Mohammed Jafar Sahraroudi and Hadji Moustafawi, except that this time there was also a third member: Amir Mansur Bozorgian who was a bodyguard. The Kurds also had a three-man delegation: Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, his aide Abdullah Ghaderi Azar (a member of the PDKI Central Committee) and Fadhil Rassoul, an Iraqi Kurdish university professor who had acted as a mediator. [custom_adv] The release of the only witnesses angered the Austrian public and media. The Austrian daily Arbeiter Zeitung, responding to a Foreign Ministry official’s remark that homeland had threatened reprisals if its nationals were taken into custody, wrote: “This kowtowing to Iran will protect Austria for a while from the mullahs’ wrath. But it’s an invitation saying, ‘Austria’s pretty; come here to kill’” (Randal, 1989). [custom_adv] In 1991, Qāsemlu’s widow, Helene Krülich, initiated legal proceedings against the Austrian state for not pursuing an investigation of the murder, releasing the assassins, and allowing them to leave the country. In 1992, the Austrian high court dismissed the case . [custom_adv] Qāsemlu and Ghaderi-Azar were buried in Paris at the Père Lachaise cemetery. With Qāsemlu’s death, the Iranian Kurdish movement suffered a severe blow, which impacted the progress for an autonomous Kurdish nation.
