Parviz Sabeti
Parviz Sabeti (Persian پرویز ثابتی, born March 25, 1936 in Sangesar ) was a high ranking security officer of the Iranian intelligence service SAVAK ( Sazeman -e Ettela'at Va Amniat -e Keschvar ( Organization for their information and for protection of the country). Sabeti was Head of the Main Division III (domestic intelligence).
Life
Parviz Sabeti was born on 25 March 1936 in Sangesar, a village near Semnan. Parviz attended elementary school in his hometown. To attend high school, he was sent to Tehran.
After graduating from high school to Parviz Sabeti wrote at Tehran University in the Faculty of Law. After graduating Sabeti wanted to be a judge. Before he took office, Sabeti heard that the Messenger service SAVAK newly established employee seeking. He applied and was set in 1957 as a political analyst.
The Iranian secret service SAVAK was originally a kind of combination of CIA and FBI. He had three departments that were responsible for social, economic and political analyzes. Relatively quickly became Parviz Sabeti head of the major political department. The department has written two different types of reports: a daily top-secret " report in three copies, one copy for the Shah, a copy of the head of SAVAK and a copy for the Prime Minister. The second type of report were special reports " only for the eyes of the Shah ", which dealt with selected questions of internal security. These special reports it were, which Sabeti owed his later reputation among others.
The first, demanded by the Shah report that Sabeti wrote was in 1962. In the United States John F. Kennedy was elected president, and he urged the Shah and Prime Minister Ali Amini, In Iran finally hold free and fair elections. The Shah asked when the then head of SAVAK General Hassan Pakravan a report on the question of what would happen in Iran if free elections were to take place. Parviz Sabeti was commissioned to write the report. At the beginning of the report he asked the question, whether the Iranians considered the holding of free elections for really necessary. He answered the question by saying that he claimed that the Iranians would not be unhappy because there would be no democracy or no free elections in Iran. Sabeti said that the Iranians would support an authoritarian ruling king so long, so long, there would be no corruption and the country is " developing in the right direction ." Sabeti was convinced that the Iranians bread and safety would prefer democracy and elections. Then Sabeti went in his report on the conditions for a successful holding of free elections. The population One must first of all prepare for such elections. If the population is not informed about the procedure and the deeper meaning of free elections, an election would bring only chaos in the country. In the context of an election analysis for each election district in the country Sabeti found that about a third of parliamentary seats would fall to the opposition parties. As the members of the opposition parties are politically committed and well trained, it would be easy for them to steer decisions in Parliament by their speeches in their direction.
When the Shah read the report, he was " hit the roof. " He formally that the report was too negative, and for an example of the " nihilistic negativism " which he had identified with the opposition. A three-person commission of inquiry was formed that examined the report on substantive and methodological errors. The Commission came to the conclusion that both the survey-based election forecasts as well as the conclusions of the report were correct. The elections in Iran were therefore further held " the tradition of the country accordingly."
1969 there was a reorganization of the SAVAK Amir Abbas Hoveyda of Prime Minister. The Department of Parviz Sabeti was merged with the Department to combat subversive groups. Under subversive groups, the communist Tudeh Party and Communist guerrilla organizations, the movements of the National Front, Kurdish and other separatist movements and Islamic radicals such as the Fedayeen -e Islam and the Volksmodschahedin were understood.
In an interview broadcast on Iranian television took a " senior security officer " was meant Parviz Sabeti, comment on the subversion of the former intelligence chief Teymur Bakhtiar. Sabeti said that were available to him is clear evidence that the Western oil companies Teymur Bakhtiar financially supported to torpedo the view taken by the Shah policy of higher oil prices. Sabeti also spoke of that directed against the Iranian government student protest movement at home and abroad would be led by extremist groups, and that they are supported by Western political movements, because they accepted that the development of Iran to an industrialized country as an immediate threat to their economic. After the American and British Embassy had complained to the Iranian Government on these alleged falsehoods, there was a statement from the Iranian side, that these statements were based on documents that could have been found in Teymur Bakhtiar.
At the beginning of the seventies, a new " special department for fight against terrorism " was established, formal but lay their line at a military de facto at Parviz Sabeti. It was this special section that developed a notorious reputation for torture and brutality, methods that have been associated later with the entire SAVAK. The Volksmodschahedin you had to deal with a new generation of militants who were always ready to kill their political opponents, and their arrest cyanide pills were found under the tongue.
With the growing criticism of the torture methods of SAVAK by foreign lawyers and human rights organizations the power of SAVAK was circumcised. General Nematollah Nassiri, who had the intelligence service conducted 13 years, was replaced by Lieutenant General Nasser Moghadam. Parviz Sabeti was convinced that the planned political liberalization could threaten the entire political system of Iran. After Jimmy Carter had won the presidential elections in the USA, and thus was also clear that the pressure on the Shah, the political system to further liberalize would grow, Sabeti wrote a long report, which should be discussed similarly controversial, as his first report of 1961 on " Free elections in Iran." Sabeti considered that the situation in 1976 for substantially more dangerous than 1961. Opposition is essential better organized. A key factor for the existing danger were militants who had undergone military training in foreign training camps. A policy of liberalization could bring the entire system to collapse, Sabeti wrote. As in 1961 the Shah was full of criticism of Sabetis negative analysis. "Believe Sabeti about that the White Revolution had achieved nothing? " The Shah decided this time against the Council Sabetis and began in 1977 with the policy of "open political space ", like Sabeti had predicted, and a wave of demonstrations the end of 1978 led to the collapse of the constitutional monarchy in Iran.
Yet in May 1978 Sabeti was convinced that the activities organized by the followers of Khomeini demonstrations could be terminated by the use of force measures. He sent the Shah a comprehensive list of 1,500 names and asked to be allowed to arrest the people on the list. The Shah reduced the list of persons subject to arrest a few hundred. The arrests began and it went first restored order in the country. But Prime Minister Jamshid Amuzegar insisted that the detainees would be released immediately because he wanted a to the demands of U.S. President Jimmy Carter and especially its aligned to the human rights policy. The arrested were released and the political unrest should reach the arson attack on the Cinema Rex in Abadan, with 400 deaths a new peak.
As the end of 1978 the political situation in Iran had reached the boiling point, hit Sabeti before the Shah to declare a state of emergency, dissolve the parliament, to close the British and the American embassy, and to act with an iron fist against the opposition movement. If law and order would be restored, the necessary reforms could be addressed. The Shah rejected the proposal Sabetis as " childish" from. A few weeks later left Sabeti Iran and has lived abroad since that time.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has published thousands coming from Parviz Sabeti documents and made available for research. In a given after the Islamic Revolution interview Parviz Sabeti said: " The Shah may have had his faults, but considering what came before it and what came after him, and when one considers that governments neighboring countries of Iran possess, the system of the Shah was the best that could be expected Iran. "