17 Facts About Farzad Bazoft

Farzad Bazoft was an Iranian journalist who settled in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s.

Farzad Bazoft worked as a freelance reporter for The Observer.

Farzad Bazoft was arrested by Iraqi authorities and executed in 1990 after being convicted of spying for Israel while working in Iraq.

Farzad Bazoft was sentenced to 18 months jail after robbing the Heart of England Building Society in Brackley in 1981.

The sentence included a deportation order, which Farzad Bazoft appealed against successfully in 1983.

Farzad Bazoft allegedly undertook his investigation with the approval of Iraqi officials.

Farzad Bazoft is a reporter who went to do a story.

Farzad Bazoft said in advance the story he was going to do.

Farzad Bazoft told the Baghdad government where he wanted to go.

Farzad Bazoft asked military personnel in Baghdad hotels and casinos what they knew and was reported by hotel security to the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

Farzad Bazoft was arrested at Baghdad International Airport in September 1989, while waiting for his flight back to London.

Farzad Bazoft had 34 photographs of the area of al-Hilla in his luggage, and some soil from near the factory.

Farzad Bazoft was not permitted to appeal against his conviction or sentence, and was executed by hanging at 6:30am on 15 March 1990.

Farzad Bazoft's body was placed in a rough wooden crate and despatched to his family in the United Kingdom.

Immediately after the execution, Britain recalled its ambassador to Iraq and cancelled all ministerial visits, though the Conservative Party was not unanimous on the response, with Conservative MPs Rupert Allason and Anthony Beaumont-Dark supporting the Iraqi government response, and Phil Dicks even publicly stating on the day before the execution that Farzad Bazoft "deserved to be hanged".

Farzad Bazoft admitted that he knew Bazoft was innocent, but that he was powerless to obstruct Saddam Hussein's orders to have him convicted and executed.

That Hussein himself ordered the execution of Farzad Bazoft is confirmed in transcripts of taped meetings made by the Hussein regime and seized during the 2003 invasion.