After a three-year trial, the court sentenced an Iranian grocer and three Lebanese accomplices to prison for the 1992 murder of three Kurdish dissidents and their translator. The judge, Frithjof Kubsch, said the “hit team” took its orders from “the highest state levels” in Iran–specifically, a committee that included President Hashemi Rafsanjani and Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Germany immediately recalled its ambassador from Tehran and expelled four Iranian diplomats. It also suspended the “critical dialogue” policy. The European Union recommended a mass recall of ambassadors. Iran denied the charges, recalling its own ambassador from Germany and expelling four German diplomats. In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Bums observed: “The ‘critical dialogue’ has not succeeded in moderating Iran’s behavior”-a polite way of saying, we told you so.
