Kahrizak detention center.
The Jaras opposition website said that Dr. Abdol-Reza Sudbakhsh had been assigned to Kahrizak and had been pressed by officials there to certify that four deaths there among election protesters resulted from meningitis and not severe beatings.
Another Kahrizak doctor, Ramin Pourandarjani, died mysteriously last November after reportedly telling people he had signed false death certificates. The government gave four different explanations for Pour-andarjani’s death.
But Pourandarjani was a young physician assigned to Kahrizak as part of his mandatory military service. Sudbakhsh was a much more senior physician, so it wasn’t clear why he would have any assignment to Kahrizak. Tehran Police Chief Hossain Sajedi-nia has denied Sudbakhsh had any link to the detention center.
The two murders continue to fascinate the public. The government has said there is no political aspect to either murder. It says the homicides were unconnected and that both resulted from personal concerns. It has not described any personal concerns in the Sudbakhsh killing, while saying the other doctor was killed in revenge for a botched medical case.
Sudbakhsh was killed September 21 and Dr. Gholam-Reza Sarabi was killed the next night. In both cases, the men were shot. In both cases, the killers rode up on motorbikes. In both cases, the killing took place just outside the doctors’ offices as they were leaving their buildings for the evening.
A week after the murder of Sarabi, the state news agency said that one of Sarabi’s killers had committed suicide in Qasr-e Shirin, a city in Kermanshahan province on the border with Iraq. It said police were chasing a car that failed to stop when ordered to. The driver abandoned the vehicle in a village and ran into the hills. Surrounded by police officers, the man “committed suicide by firing a number of bullets at himself,” the report said.
The police later identified the man as Bahman Karimi. The report said Karimi and two relatives had collaborated in murdering Dr. Sarabi. A few days later, police in the province announced they had arrested one of the other relatives.
Sarabi was a heart specialist. Police said he was killed in revenge for a botched medical case.
Sudbakhsh, 61, was an infectious disease specialist on the faculty of the Tehran University medical school and on the staff of the Imam Khomeini Hospital. The police have not said whether they have any suspects in his murder.
This Tuesday, a small explosion was reported in a ground floor corridor of Tehran’s Al-Qadir Hospital. The hospital said there were no injuries, but some windows were visibly blown out. The police said one suspect had been arrested. It isn’t known if there was any link between the murders and the explosion.