The Chain Murders of Iran[, or Serial Murders, were a series of murders and disappearances from 1988-1998 by Iranian government operatives of Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way
The victims included more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens, and were killed by a variety of means – car crashes, stabbings, shootings in staged robberies, injections with potassium to simulate a heart attack – in what some believe was an attempt to avoid connection between them.[8 The pattern of murders did not come to light until late 1998 when a political leader (Dariush Forouhar), his wife and three dissident writers, were murdered in the span of two months
After the murders were publicized Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei denied the government was at all responsible and blamed "Iran's enemies". In mid-1999, after great public outcry and journalistic investigation in Iran and publicity abroad Iranian prosecutors announced they had found the perpetrator. One Saeed Emami had led "rogue elements" in Iran's intelligence ministry in the killings, but that Emami was now dead, having committed suicide in prison In a trial that was "dismissed as a sham by the victims' families and international human rights organisations, three intelligence ministry agents were sentenced in 2001 to death and 12 others to prison terms for murdering two of the victims.