Hassan Zadeh Zine el-Abidine; one of MEK victims : They fired twelve bullets in my back
Hassan is 47. He lives alone in a modest neighborhood in Isfahan, in southern Iran. He gets around by wheelchair since 1980.in that year, a member of the Mojahedin shot him several times in the back. He never recovered.
As he described it:” At the time, I was a simple worker in a mosaic workshop. In the evening, toward eight o clock, I was on my way home. I parked my car and had taken a few steps toward my house when a gunman, hidden in the dark, fired at me from point blank range. I had no time to react. From the first bullet wound, I was on the ground. The gunman, who had two revolvers, riddled my body with twelve shots. He emptied them both in me.”
Hassan was treated for several months in Tehran Hospital. He was lucky: many other people shot by the Mojahedin did not survive. His disability has not kept him from his studies. With his degree in Theology, he teaches at Isfahan’s Teacher Training College.
Hassan remembers:” it was during the first months of the revolution. Everybody was involved. but I was no more active than many others. And I had not joined any political party”. He sill cannot understand why the Mojahedin chose him as a target. His assailant was arrested soon thereafter in Sabzebar, in Khoram province in northeastern Iran. He was tried and executed. Hassan states:” I would have liked so much to hear him explain why he did it”.
Why did the Mojahedin choose violence? Hassan’s philosophical answer: “They could not take power through peaceful and democratic means in a system of universal suffrage. No human being can agree with the violent strategy they adopted”.
From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier