A Tribute...
On a warm, exceptionally sunny afternoon, in the spring of 1990, a group of mourners arrived at London’s Highgate Cemetery. Walking down the leafy Egyptian Avenue they passed the tombs of several famous Victorian personalities. Between the trees, in the far corner, stood an impressive bust of Karl Marx. Beside it the grave of a British-Iranian reporter hanged in Iraq after being wrongly accused of spying by the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.

Friends, admirers, family and former colleagues from the Observer who attended the memorial service that day would for the rest of their lives be tormented by images of this man, obsessed by what he must have suffered at the end of his wretched life. Ten years after his death there seems to be two portraits flashing across their minds. Firstly, there is Farzad Bazoft – tall, dark-haired, funny, witty, charming and handsome in blue jeans and a pale-blue shirt. The other image is of a broken man in the baggy prison-issue pyjamas confessing his "crimes" on Iraqi television, his words contradicting themselves.

Somewhere in between lies an enigma lost in a myriad of international conspiracy theories, tales of secret weapons and espionage, traitors, stories of lust and greed. In the shadowy world of intelligence agencies, Iranian exiles, diplomats, and arms dealers, Farzad Bazoft’s name still raises more questions than answers about the man himself. In piecing together a puzzle one must start from what is known.

2. Background

Born in 1960, Farzad Bazoft grew up in Abadan in an upper middle-class Bakhtiyari family. His father, a wealthy oil executive at the National Iranian Oil Company, had sent his eldest son to Britain so that he could benefit from an English education and avoid military conscription in the Shah’s army. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, Bazoft, who had always lived beyond his means, found himself out of pocket and suddenly on hard times. Finding himself in limbo and unable to pay his rent he moved in with a sympathetic Persian family he had met at Hyde Park corner during a royalist demonstration. For the next six years, he concentrated on finishing his education by correspondence and scraped a living writing second hand stories for exiled Iranian publications and later for the Daily Mirror. Dr. Ali-Reza Nourizadeh, a political consultant at the Centre for Arab Iranian Studies, first met Bazoft in 1986. "I treated him like my brother and edited some of his work," Nourizadeh recalled. "Bazoft had all the drive of a young, hungry reporter impatient to make it big." His lucky break came when he was taken on by the Observer during the Iran-Iraq War as a freelance and given a desk at the newspaper’s brand new Battersea offices. Ian Mather, a Defence correspondent and onetime neighbour spoke frankly about his colleague as his wife poured coffee in their sunny living room. "Farzad was a nice fellow, ambitious and always eager to get ahead," he said. "We used to sit next to each other at work and socially drank at the local pub. We saw quite a lot of each other. He was always a regular visitor to our house showing off his string of pretty girlfriends. Margaret, my wife, was very fond of him and like a mother she felt he was taking too many risks and was convinced that he would end up in trouble one day. As a journalist, he was somewhat of a loose canon. Bazoft was an accident waiting to happen."

3.Climbing Up

By the time a few of his articles had been published in the Observer Bazoft’s career appeared to be taking off. He was feeling on top of the world on his 30th birthday. He had just bought a small flat on Fortis Greene Road. Over drinks he appeared confident and enthusiastic telling his friends about his plans for decorating his home. There was very little furniture, but until he could afford the expensive items he had set his heart on, he explained, he was happy to wait until he got a permanent staff job at the newspaper. He was, he reckoned, just as good at his job as most of his colleagues, and better than some. He boasted about his contacts, the Iraqi ambassador was his best friend, the Israeli Defence minister, the Kuwaiti Sheikh, the foreign ministers of Britain and France, and so on. This was Farzad playing the ace reporter. He was always adding to the aura of glamour and intrigue he was trying to build up, not particularly around himself, but around the job he enjoyed so much. He made journalism sound such a dynamic, racy kind of profession, and the women loved it. "He was always talking about wanting to make enough money to settle down and marry a blonde," Margaret Mather recalled. "I remember buying him a silly gift. It was a pair of boxer shorts with the Union Jack. It made us all laugh because Bazoft was still waiting to be granted a British passport." There was, it seemed, no doubt in his mind that he would achieve his fantasy; it was really a question of when. But as the months went by, he grew morose, worrying that he was going to lose his job and a few colleagues noticed that behind his gracious and reserved smile there lay a hidden anxiety. "He desperately needed a big story to lift himself up the ladder," Mohammad Hamidi, editor of the London Keyhan and personal friend of Farzad Bazoft recalled.

4.Iraqi Story

A huge explosion in Hilla on August 17, 1989, 25 miles from Baghdad helped confirm suspicions on the part of some people like Adel Darwish, the Egyptian born journalist who broke the story at the Independent, and members of the intelligence community that nuclear research was going on there. This was the chance he was waiting for. In early September, when Ian Mather turned down the offer to cover the story, Bazoft approached the Iraqi government for an invitation to cover the Kurdish elections. Accounts differ as to regarding Bazoft’s agenda: some say he was on an intelligence mission for the UK (and, probably unbeknownst to him, Israel indirectly). Others believe he needed a scoop to save his career and by going to Iraq he hoped to prove himself to his colleagues. It was a calculated risk and a very dangerous one, even suicidal. Helga Graham, a former Observer journalist and a strong critic of Saddam’s treatment of the Kurds, was the last person to speak to Bazoft before his departure. "I feel responsible for his death," she said offering me a gin and tonic and salmon sandwiches. As the logs burned in the elegant fireplace of her Hampstead home, she explained how she had tried to warn Bazoft against such a foolhardy mission. It was pure madness, she said, for the newspaper to let him go. "For God’s sake, Farzad," she had told him, "you know you will be under observation all the time in Baghdad so don’t do anything of the kind." The truth was that nobody could have stopped Bazoft from going and doing his job.

5. Arrested

Once in Iraq, Bazoft contacted Daphne Parish, a blue-eyed English nurse at Baghdad’s Ibn Al Bitar Hospital whom he had charmed earlier in the year. When the Iraqi Ministry of Information failed to send a promised car to take him to Hilla, Parish offered to drive Bazoft to the scene of the explosion and back. After two visits Farzad was able to collect the evidence he required: a shoe, pieces of clothing and some ash samples. In what now seems an incredibly foolish act, Bazoft tried to pass these items to the British embassy asking them to send it for analysis to London by diplomatic pouch. Not only did they refuse to do so but they strongly warned him to get out of Iraq on the first available plane. That night he carelessly told a fellow journalist in the bar of the Meridian Hotel that he was sitting on a big story, a reference to the two pots of ash samples tucked inside his jean pockets. The next day, he tried to pass his evidence to a Swiss tourist who declined to help him. Shortly after that, agents of the dreaded Mukhaberat arrested Bazoft at the airport just as he was preparing to leave the country. It took several days for the news to filter out of Baghdad that Daphne Parish and Bazoft had been arrested, imprisoned and relentlessly interrogated by the Iraqis. A secretary at the Observer was horrified when she heard the news. "I was so naive in those days," she recalled sadly. "I imagined Farzad being locked away in a white cell with lots of sunshine. Stupidly I thought Iraq was like Greece. Never thought anything serious would happen to him. I used to stroll in Battersea Park praying for his safe return."

6. Sentenced

For the next six months Bazoft and Parish were kept in appaling conditions in solitary confinement. During this period a quiet campaign for their release was set in motion. Adrian Hamilton, deputy editor of the Observer and John Merrit approached the Foreign Office asking them to use their influence to secure their release. Other journalists such as Ian Mather and Helga Graham led a wider campaign by organising nightly vigils in front of the Iraqi Embassy in Queensgate. Daily television and radio coverage brought national attention to their plight swelling the number of demonstrations. On March 8, 1990 after a travesty of a trial conducted in Arabic, which neither of them understood, both Daphne Parish and Farzad Bazoft were found guilty of undermining the security of Iraq. Parish was sentenced to 15 years. Bazoft was sentenced to death. On the journey back to the interrogation centre in the same car, Bazoft stared straight ahead blankly; he could have been in another world. At one point when they were left alone, unguarded and unobserved, Parish urged him to escape but Farzad, dressed in a dark blazer and grey trousers, was in shock; he appeared to be rooted to the spot, unable to move. A few moments later the prisoners were taken into the building. "I was told to wait with the guard who was seated at a desk just inside the door," Daphne Parish would write later. "Another guard escorted Farzad to the lift. As the doors closed, he was staring out like someone in a dream. I waved, but he didn’t respond. It was the last time I saw him alive."

7. Hanged

Despite condemnations from the world community in general (Margaret Thatcher, Egypt’s President Mubarak, the Saudi King and the late King Hussein of Jordan, one of Saddam Hussein’s closest allies in the Arab world, sent Saddam a letter asking for clemency for Bazoft, at the request of the UK), Saddam Hussein refused to spare Bazoft’s life. Once Bazoft was executed on March 15, 1990, his body was dumped in front of the British Embassy, and the Iraqi Information cowed "Mrs. Thatcher wanted Bazoft alive. We gave her the body." Robin Kealy, First Secretary at the British Embassy in Baghdad had declined an invitation to watch the hanging but met Farzad before he went to the gallows. Years later he told Adel Darwish that it was the worst day of his diplomatic life. "Kealy wept as he told me the story," Darwish recounted. "He told me that Farzad was composed, even joking with his Iraqi guards who kept telling him he was going to be strung up. It was as if he expected a last minute reprieve, but it never came." Dr. Ali-Reza Nourizadeh heard the news on the BBC World Service at 6a.m. "I was devastated," he recalled emotionally. "He should never have gone. I shut myself in the shower and wept for an hour." The Iraqis sent Farzad Bazoft’s coffin to London. Nourizadeh was among those who accompanied Bazoft’s parents and girlfriend to identify his corpse. "He had a calm face, except for the rope marks around his neck," he recalled grimly. Bazoft’s death shocked many of his friends and colleagues who later criticised the Foreign Office for letting them down and some of them blamed themselves. "I had many sleepless nights after his tragic death," Adel Darwish recalled, sipping his peppermint tea in the Library room of the Marriott Hotel. "Farzad was my friend but I am still very angry at him. He gave up his life for nothing. I wish the Hilla story had never been written." Helga Graham disputes allegations that Bazoft was indeed a spy. "He was a bloodhound journalist with a reckless attitude to danger," she revealed. Peter Beaumont, an assistant editor at the Observer who was close to the murdered journalist agrees. "During this whole business," he said in a telephone interview, "I had the sad and very unpleasant task of going through his London flat to see if there was any truth to the allegations. I didn’t find anything." Despite these statements the Iraqis claimed that Bazoft had drawn precise maps of the factory site and had even disguised himself as a hospital staff member to get past the fenced area. Even now the conspiracy theories continues to fuel speculation on Bazoft’s activities.

8. Epilogue

"Farzad was no hero," Margaret Mather sighed as she looked for one of the smaller pencil drawings she had made of Bazoft. A larger picture which she had done had been offered to the Observer newspaper and had hung in the boardroom after being used in countless demonstrations in front of the Iraqi Embassy. "I wish someone had stopped him from going to Iraq, but then he would never have listened. He would have still gone ahead and done his own thing. He was a poor, rootless boy. He was an alien, but a welcome alien. He should have found a rich girl and settled down. I felt so sorry for his family. Watching their grief at the funeral I realised there was nothing I could do to bring their son back. The only thing I could do was to give them a portrait of him." Every year, for six years, until his health problems intervened, Adel Darwish made sure to visit his friend’s grave. "I always took a bunch of flowers," he recalled emotionally. "He loved hyacinths." In his last message from prison, Bazoft had hinted that should he not make it out he would have liked to be buried next to Karl Marx. "By a twist of fate the Observer managed to pull a few strings and secured a small pathway opposite the great man at Highgate Cemetery," Ian Mather told me. Strangely, had Bazoft died a day earlier he would have even shared the same death anniversary with Marx. Daphne Parish, Bazoft’s admirer, was eventually released thanks to the diplomatic efforts of the Foreign Office and her daughter Michelle de Vries, now a specialist on Iraq. In her moving book, Prisoner of Baghdad, Parish wrote: "If the months in jail have taught me anything, they have taught me that life is truly precious." Rest in peace, Farzad Bazoft. You are still remembered. I would like to thank all those who assisted me in writing the story of Farzad Bazoft and to extend BIBA’s sympathies to his family, friends and all those who in some ways were touched and deeply affected by this British-Iranian tragedy. The following tributes come from several colleagues who graciously agreed to share their private thoughts on the eve of his 10th anniversary. Cyrus Kadivar, Deputy Editor.

Bazoft Remembered -

Adrian Hamilton, Editor, The Independent:

Ten years after, we know enough of Saddam Hussein to understand that he required no special reason to execute Farzad. Secrets to a devotee of Stalin are absolute, and must be protected absolutely. A decade after his death we need no special explanation of why Farzad did what he did. He was a journalist in search of a story. Naive? Yes, but naive in a way that all the best young reporters are, eager at the sniff of a good story. That was Farzad. Eager. And determined, determined to be a journalist and a good one, whatever it took. If only there were more like him.

Ian Mather, Defence Correspondent:

Despite the generation gap between us Farzad and I became close colleagues at The Observor in the 1980s. He covered the Middle East as a native of that region and I covered the Iran-Iraq war as the paper’s Defence Correspondent. Farzad was taking the classic route for young journalists seeking to make a name for themselves when his blossoming career was cruelly cut short. He took a calculated risk in travelling to Iraq and investigating a mysterious explosion at a military site. I can empathise with him completely. I had been arrested and held in prison in Argentina for three months during the Falklands War, but had emerged to tell the tale. Farzad was just desperately unlucky. Yet the terrible fate he suffered will not deter other young journalists from taking risks. They know, as Farzad knew, that the prize for those who make it onto a good newspaper is a way of life that is totally rewarding.

Helga Graham, Writer on International Affairs:

It is hard for anyone who has not lived through that period as a journalist to imagine how difficult it was to criticise Saddam Hussein in the western media up to the arrest of Farzad Bazoft and even beyond, to the very eve of the invasion of Kuwait. To most Western governments Saddam was the enemy of the enemy (i.e. Iran) and a valued commercial partner. Most of the media faithfully reflected this bias. A friend of mine, deputy director of a top current affairs TV programmes, was nearly fired for making a TV programme on Saddam’s human rights record despite carefully including not merely his opponents but also his supporters. My efforts to build up a campaign against Saddam in the Observer were slow to take off in 1986/87 although the paper regularly published my pieces on the chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds, usually ignored by the conservative press. To his credit, the then Observer editor, Donald Trelford, allowed the anti-Saddam campaign to go ahead in 1988/89. I was commissioned to write a couple of long review front pieces on Saddam detailing the torture, chemical weapons, etc – and not the least, the Western governments support for him – due to be published at the beginning of September 1989. Unfortunately, for myself – and tragically for FB – I was late in completing the piece, having been ill in August. In the course of work on it, I had first come across Farzad at an Arab reception. He came up to me and suggested he become involved in the anti-Saddam enterprise because he too shared my strong views on the subject. I did not follow up his suggestion because, frankly, I did not consider he had sufficient expertise. Our next encounter was on the telephone on the eve of his departure to Baghdad. He called me to say that he was leaving and that he wanted to help me by going to the southern Iraqi camps where Kurds, rounded up in the disastrous Iraqi onslaught known as the "Anfall" in which thousands of Kurds had also been killed, were thought to be interned. I was horrified on two counts. First, by the suggestion he leave Baghdad on such a perilous, indeed foolhardy mission, and said something along the lines of "For God’s sake, F, you know you will be under observation all the time in Baghdad so don’t do anything of the kind." But I was also startled and very worried that he was going to Baghdad at all. After all, I had earlier spent a couple of weeks in Damascus collecting material on Saddam from Iraqi exiles and Syrians and since Baghdad inevitably knew all about it – I was by then their bete noire anyway – it struck me as pure madness to allow Farzad to travel there. I put out my hand to the phone thinking to persuade the paper to stop his trip. I then withdrew it reflecting that it was probably too late. I was concerned too to deprive him of a commission I knew he needed. I was wrong, very wrong, and the paper even more so. Two days after Farzad Bazoft was hanged, I received a call to my home from the Iraqi cultural centre here. They had received a telex from the Minister of Information inviting me to Baghdad. Still raw from Farzad’s death and presuming it to be the threat it obviously was, I laughed long and loud. "I know why you are laughing", said the secretary unexpectedly, "But I’m only doing my job." When my piece on Farzad’s death appeared in the paper – the first I had been allowed to write since Farzad had been taken for fear of provoking Saddam – all trace of my diatribe against Western policy makers for backing Saddam had been removed. A kind of surgical strike. So much for the vaunted independence of the press. The mother of all great games was rolling. Farzad Bazoft, sadly, was one broken body among many.

Adel Darwish, Writer on Middle East Affairs:

Holding a pot of blue hyacinth in my hand, I visualised Farzad Bazoft wearing his cheeky smile. I almost heard his hearty laughter livening up this cold wet typical London afternoon in a calm deserted corner of Highgate cemetery where he once said, in a passing comment, he wanted to be buried. The scene was more lively ten years ago. His photographs in newspapers and carried by some mourners at the same spot where I stood drowning in my thoughts. Not only fellow Journalists who came to the funeral. But the crowd was made of a mix of humanity: Iranians from different religions, many other nationalities, just friends, neighbours and three of his girlfriends, for Farzad, to say the least, was ‘popular with women.’ I remember the Anglican dean of St. Bride’s church, the spiritual home for many generations who passed through Fleet street, was there listening, with his heart, to Koranic verses recited in a language his mind didn’t understand, as Muslims started placing earth on the freshly occupied grave. The churchman didn’t know Farzad, but a day earlier he conducted his memorial service in a crowded church. Fixing my gaze on the rain-washed headstone, and inhaling the scent of hyacinth I reheard the 10 year old sad symphony: whispers, words of comfort, sighs of grief, some soft gentle sad chanting by Muslims mourning Farzad on that sad day in 1990. British writers, and journalists, some knew him, and some didn’t, but they were united by a sense of – more anger than – grief at his murder. Many faces I remembered from the memorial service, where I recognised people belonging to at least seven different faiths, as well as atheists, singing hymns and praying, in an English Church, for Farzad’s soul. It was more of a festival of protest and solidarity than a funeral. A joint expression of love for a young man who died doing a job he loved and glamourised. We were also grieving for many fellow reporters, killed for being journalists in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were angry at Farzad’s murderers, as well as at the faceless ‘Sir Humphrys’ of an officialdom that let the whole British media down, when they deserted Farzad letting him taste a bitter lonely death in nose of the ‘Butcher of Baghdad.’ It is that chilly lonely feeling that still blows on my heart, every time I recall his smiling face, his jokes laughing during comparing notes on women and wine. I still taste his loneliness during the last days, hours and minutes of his short colourful life. Perhaps that is why I always went alone – never with any one – to visit Farzad since his funeral in 1990. His death, I remember, brought me face to face with my own loneliness, the life long companion of writers and foreign reporters. I didn’t realise then, how much the tragedy would affect me. I only met him three years earlier. Then we met many times in press conferences and in the course of covering events. I grew to like him. He was fun to be with, simply loved life and recruited his companions to the same belief. He was excited about his job, giving analysis of the region, an attractive character, a typical Middle East charmer, as well as a typical energetic reporter. He helped me in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988 when, on several occasions, he used his influence and, ironically, good contacts with Iraqi officials, succeeding to facilitate filling my story after the hotel telex-room clerk – usually in the service of Iraqi intelligence – had gone home. Farzad never believed that his ‘Iraqi friends’ would betray him. It was part of his character to trust, and be open with, everyone. He was a naive playboy who never meant to do any harm. He was looking for a good story, but he also liked to create a romantic picture of which he believed he was a central component. Even before his execution he thought, somehow, that the Iraqi dictator, in a dramatic romantic gesture would give him a last minute reprieve. I guess, looking back now, I was angry with Farzad, like your anger against your own children when they carelessly harm themselves while having fun. Farzad was a gentle soul, happy, playful, flamboyant, womanizer, who worked hard, played hard and enjoyed life to the full. He helped colleagues and strangers whenever he could. He did not deserve to be murdered that way. URL: www.mideastnews.com