Saeed Emami

Saeed Emami (also known as Saeed Eslami) was a senior official in the Ministry of Intelligence who served as Deputy Minister for Security Affairs under Ali Fallahian. He masterminded and directed the chain murders — a decade-long campaign of assassinations targeting Iranian intellectuals, writers, and dissidents from 1988 to 1998. Emami led a unit of operatives who carried out the killings of Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, Ali Akbar Saidi Sirjani, and dozens of other victims. He also orchestrated the 1996 attempt to kill 21 writers by driving their bus off a cliff at Heyran Pass. He remained an advisor to Intelligence Minister Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi at the time of his arrest in early 1999. On 20 June 1999, his death was announced — officially by suicide after drinking depilatory cream on 16 June. The claim was widely disbelieved; Shirin Ebadi stated it was 'impossible' for him to have died that way. No public photographs of his body were ever released, and no grave was registered in his name. He is widely believed to have been murdered to prevent him from revealing who gave the orders for the chain murders.