By Nader Sardari
BERLIN 19th Jan. (IPS) Mr. Hamid Khorsand, a 37 years-old Iranian terrorist-agent-spy working for the Intelligence Ministry of the Islamic Republic was condemned Wednesday by a Berlin court to 18 months of suspended jail and payment of 10.000 DM on espionage charges, but was freed, taking in account the six months he had spent in prison.
Both Iranian and German analysts in Berlin explained the relatively light sentence by "linking" it to the situation of Mr. Helmut Hofer, a German businessman arrested almost three years ago and charged of sexual liaison with a Muslim Iranian woman.
Condemned to death but absolved on initial charge last July, Mr. Hofer was nevertheless held under custody and kept in prison after Mr. Khorsand was detained, this time accused of having insulted an prison guard.
However, the analysts pointed out, the verdict was "correct and responded to what was generally expected".
Now that Mr. Khorsand is free and allowed to remain in Germany, it is believed that Mr. Hofer could also recover his freedom very quickly, possibly in the coming days.
Caught "red hand" while sending information by telephone to Iran, Mr. Khorsand, an "old hand" agent of the notorious secret services of the Islamic Republic was arrested last July and charged of having infiltrated Iranian opposition organisations, particularly the Baghdad-based, Iraqi-backed, financed and armed Mujahedin Khalq Organisation (MKO) and reporting on their activities in Europe directly to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry in Tehran.
His telephone communications with an unidentified official of the Intelligence Ministry code-named "Seyyed" were intercepted by German intelligence services and played during the trial.
Iran rejected the charges as "baseless" and accused of being "influenced" by the "Zionists", a routine scapegoat of the Iranian ruling clerics who nevertheless had forgot that they had in the past acted on behalf of Mr. Khorsandi and other agents.
In fact, the trial confirmed that Mr. Khorsand was an "active" agent of the Islamic Republic and had take part in a violent attack mounted on 24th April 1982 by more than one hundred pro-Islamic Republic Iranian and Lebanese students on a dormitory in the city of Mainz filled mostly by Iranian students opposed to the then newly created clerical regime of Iran, killing one and wounding tens of other anti-Islamic Republic students.
Arrested for the first time by German Police alongside other attackers that included Mr. Kazem Darabi and Mr Farhad Dianat Sabet Gilani, two other senior operatives of the Intelligence Ministry, Mr. Khorsand ought to be expelled from Germany, but was freed instead after official and bold intervention by the Iranian Embassy in Bonn.
Though disguised as students and members of a so-called Union of Islamic Association, it was established latter that in fact all three men were active and official agents working for Iranian secret services in Germany.
Mr. Darabi was condemned to life imprisonment in 1997 as the "mastermind" of terrorist operation that ended with the assassination, in Berlin, in September 1992 of 4 leading members of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK).
Both Mr. Darabi and Khorsand were "handled" by Mr. Hasan Moradi, a senior intelligence agent working at the Iranian consulate in Berlin. Mr. Moradi was expelled from Germany alongside hundreds of other agents after the damaging Mykonos verdict.
After Mr. Moradi left Germany, Khorsand was put in direct telephone contact with Tehran. It was at this time that he infiltrated the MKO by becoming an active member of the organisation, participate actively at all plans, projects, plots and activities of the opposition against the Islamic Republic and report them to his superiors in Tehran, the accusation said.
Intercepted telephone conversations, most of them made with a mobile phone proved that Mr. Khorsand was in constant contacts with both Mr. Darabi (before his arrest), a German contact and latter with "Seyyed".
Referring to secret operations that resulted, among other things, to the bloody assassination of the Iranian Kurdish leaders, including Mr. Sadeq Sharafkandi, the DPIK general secretary, and other Iranian dissidents murdered by Iranian agents in Germany and in Europe, the court said concluded that Mr. Khorsadi's activities were against the interests and security of the German State.
The court that was presided over by Mr. Friythof Kubsch and had Mr. Bruno Yust as prosecutor, both of them from a Berlin Court that in a "historic" verdict delivered on April 1997 had established that "the highest ranking religious authorities of the Islamic Republic, including it's leader ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i and the then president, ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani are directly involved in the assassination of Iranian dissidents".
According to the verdict, though the activities of Mr. Khorsand endangered the security of Germany, yet since he would not respond "blindly" to "missions" the Information (Intelligence) Ministry of the Islamic Republic would ask him to perform, the Prosecutor recommended a lighter sentence instead the maximum five years of penalty he could receive under German laws. ENDS KHORSANDI 19100