Bahram Afzali (Persian: بهرام افضلی; 6 December 1937 – 25 February 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]
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 IslamMohammad 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]
^ abcdeBoroujerdi, Mehrzad; Rahimkhani, Kourosh (2018). Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook. Syracuse University Press. p. 63. ISBN9780815654322.
^ abcIran Almanac and Book of Facts, vol. 18, Echo of Iran, 1987, p. 304