During the early part of the Pahlavi era, after its founding in 1925, the definition of assassinations acquired new meaning - when government opponents are murdered at the hands of forces suspected to be organised by the government or by forces with close government ties.
Although the judicial system after the revolution did not provide for due process of the law - resulting in the execution of thousands of people, it also lead to assassinations beyond Iran’s borders. Perhaps the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar, the last Prime Minister during the Pahlavi era, and the Mykonos group attack are among the most important. The similarities between their cases and the assassinations carried out the generation before by members of the Fadaiyan-e Islam lie in the lack of formal a death sentence or sentence in absentia by the Iranian legal system but which were instead carried out as extra judicial ‘revolutionary assassinations’. Since these acts are deemed as ‘religious duty’, the assassins are venerated by the Islamic Republic administration.
In addition to their numbers, an important factor regarding the ‘chain murders’ revolved around their religious nature. In reality, none of the victims were tried in a court of any kind. Based on some of the documents and admissions of the main culprit in this case - Saeed Emami - all the deaths were carried out following the judgement of apostasy issued by certain Shia clerics. Emami emphasises: ‘Although Fallahian was an Islamic jurist, often in sensitive cases he would not personally issue the death sentence against apostates. Instead, he would obtain them from Ayatollahs Khoshvaght, Mesbah, Khazali, Jannati and at times from Hojjatol Islam Mohseni Ejjei and hand them to us’.