The trial opened Wednesday of an Iranian accused in the 1993 slaying of an Iranian dissident who died in a hail of automatic gunfire as he was being driven along a Rome street.Lawyers for the victim's family allege that the defendant, Amir Mansur Assl Bozorgian, who is being tried in absentia, was sent by Iran's leaders to murder dissident Mohammed Hussein Naghdi.
Naghdi, 42, was killed when a gunman opened fire from a motorcycle while the victim was being driven to his office. The two people aboard the motorcycle fled. Naghdi was the representative in Italy for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is part of the Mujahedeen Khalq, or Peoples Mujahedeen, the leading Iranian opposition group. The Mujahedeen Khalq participated in the 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but soon fell out with the clerical government and launched a campaign of assassinations and bombings, which landed it on the list of terrorist organizations of the United States and the European Union.