How Bureaucrats Help the Mullahs

My friend potkin azarmehr, whose blog is one of the very best, calls our attention to American complicity in the death of an Iranian dissident.

Majid Kavousifar, seen in these pictures before being hanged, left Iran for Abu Dhabi two days after the assassination of one of the corruptest and most repressive judges in the Islamic Republic. Judge Moghaddas who was assassinated by Kavousifar and his nephew, was responsible for handing out long sentences to many political activists. Moghaddas sometimes even boasted that he sentenced the accused without even reading their files!

Kavoussifar had introduced himself as the killer of Moghaddas to the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi, where he had applied for asylum. The embassy guards handed him over to the Interpol, which informed Islamic Republic’s authorities of the incident.
I thought it was just the Homeland Security at the US airports who were the thickest officials in the world!

Here, Majid Kavousifar is seen smiling and saying his last goodbye. Why are so many victims smiling in these latest round of public executions? Perhaps if there is any after life, it will be better than living under the mullahs.

We all know what the government lawyers will say: he was a known killer, his name was on the Interpol list, we really can’t give asylum to someone who has murdered a judge. All true. And yet he killed a killer and torturer, an instrument of mass repression. When is homicide justifiable?

I’m not sure I know the answer to that one, but I do think we should have taken him in, and if we felt obliged to have him tried, we could have tried him in America, where a jury could have heard the whole story. By turning him over to the mullahs, we validated their death warrant on the poor man.

But bureaucracies are famously uninterested in saving lives. I could write a sizeable pamphlet about the incredible reluctance of State Dept and White House officials to simply call our professionals in the field, and get them to issue a visa or two to people whose bravery and whose commitment to liberty are indubitable.