Committee for Special Operations

The Committee for Special Operations was a covert Iranian state body identified by the Berlin District Court in its landmark April 1997 verdict in the Mykonos restaurant assassination trial. The court found that the committee ordered the September 1992 assassination of Sadegh Sharafkandi and three other Kurdish opposition figures at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. According to the verdict, the committee comprised the highest levels of the Islamic Republic, including Ali Khamenei, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ali Fallahian, and Ali Akbar Velayati. The ruling was the first time a European court officially attributed state-sponsored assassination to the highest echelons of the Iranian government, and triggered the recall of all EU ambassadors from Tehran. It remains a foundational legal document establishing the command structure of Iran's extraterritorial assassination programme.