On July 13, 1989, a frantic getaway is taking place out front of an apartment house at 5 Linke Bahngasse in Vienna. In an article for the Austrian weekly Profil, the journalists Sibylle Hamann und Martin Staudinger reconstruct the scene:
A secret agent has been shot and he is dragged by two other men between two parked cars. He is bleeding from multiple wounds. A man on a motorcycle pulls up beside them. All four are members of an Iranian terror commando unit that has left behind a bloodbath in a two-room apartment on the fourth floor of the building and is now making its get-away. After a brief exchange of words, the man on the motorcycle steps on the gas, speeding away with one of the perpetrators.
Three men lie dead in the apartment: Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), and his two associates Abdullah Ghaderi Azar and Fadhil Rassoul. The three had been lured into an ambush under the pretense of conducting negotiations with representatives of the Iranian government.
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