Dawud Salahuddin
Encyclopedia
Dawud Salahuddin, sometimes spelled Daoud Salahuddin (also known as Hassan Abdulrahman or Hassan Tantai) is an African-American convert to Islam
most famous for his 1980 killing of Ali Akbar Tabatabai
, an Iranian dissident and critic of Ayatollah Khomeini, and his exile in the Islamic Republic of Iran
.
, on Long Island
, in a church-going Baptist family of four boys and one girl.
According to Salahuddin, as a child the "most damage done" to him was the feeling he had that it was "an indecency, an insufficiency, certainly a shame not to be white." In 1963 he describes himself as having become politicized while watching news footage from Birmingham, Alabama, showing a police chief turn back civil-rights marchers with fire hoses and dogs, which caused him to develop "an implacable hatred toward all symbols of American authority." After graduation from high school, he attended Howard University
for one semester. He was attracted to Islam because it is "color-blind" and converted at the age of 18. He frequented an Iranian student center run by Bahram Nahidian. During the early 1970s he spent time visiting prisons around Washington to, "bring the message of Islam to black inmates". He met Said Ramadan
in 1975 and Ramadan later became his mentor. He was heavily influenced by Said Ramadan, an Egyptian lawyer and Islamic scholar. As an "angry and alienated" African-American, "my biggest aspiration was to bring America to its knees, but I didn't know how."
Salahuddin first worked for the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1980, shortly after the Islamic Revolution as a security guard at an Iranian diplomatic office in Washington. He accepted an assignment from the Islamic government to assassinate Ali Akbar Tabatabai
, a former member of the Shah's regime living in exile in Bethesda, Md.
According to a 2002 article in The New Yorker
magazine, Salahuddin first attempted to convince his Iranian employers to let him kill a more prominent American target, such as Henry Kissinger
or Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
— a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt who had orchestrated the 1953 plot to depose Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, and return the Shah to power. But Ali Akbar Tabatabai, an exile, was holding meetings of a counter-revolutionary group at his home in Bethesda at the time, and the Islamic government wanted him eliminated.
On July 22, 1980, Salahuddin showed up at Tabatabai's front door in Bethesda Maryland dressed as a mailman, telling Tabatabai's associate he had a special delivery package that required Tabatabai's signature. When Tabatabai appeared, Salahuddin shot him three times in the abdomen and fled. Tabatabai died 45 minutes later. Salahuddin made his way to Iran by way of Canada and Switzerland.
In the thirty plus years as a fugitive he has worked as an English teacher, a war correspondent and a Web editor, fought the Soviets alongside the Afghan mujahedeen, and acted "in a film by one of Iran's leading directors in 2000."
He is married to an Iranian woman, speaks Persian
and works as a freelance writer. He denies receiving any direct payments from the Iranian government aside from the $5000 he received for killing Tabatabai.
Salahuddin admitted to killing Tabatabai in 1995 on ABC's 20/20 programme when he was interviewed in Istanbul. In conversations with a reporter from The New Yorker
magazine he denied the killing was "murderous", stating it was "an act of war ... In Islamic religious terms, taking a life is sometimes sanctioned and even highly praised, and I thought that event was just such a time."
According to the BBC, Salahuddin is known "by several other names," and US magazine Time
reported "he is also known as Hassan Abdul Rahman, a former editor of the state-sponsored English-language newspaper Iran Daily." According to Salahuddin he was a soldier with the mujahideen in Afghanistan from December 1986 to May 1988.
Salahuddin worked as chief online editor for Press TV
(Tehran-based English language international television news channel which is funded by the Iranian government) for three years before resigning in July following the disputed
presidential elections. He is "close" to prominent Iranian reformists film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf
and Masoumeh Ebtekar
, the former spokeswoman for the hostage-takers
at the United States Embassy in Tehran.
Despite the warrant for his arrest, Salahuddin has had some indirect contact with American authorities. Shortly after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993
, US intelligence agents established contact with Salahuddin, who "began a back-channel relationship with American authorities and talked about returning to the United States to stand trial in the murder of Tabatabai." He sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno
dated March 5, 1994, proposing mediating between the U.S. and "certain key figures in the worldwide Islamic movement" in return for freedom from prosecution. No reply was given to his letter.
. The heroine of the film is a Canadian
woman, born in Afghanistan
, who slips back into Afghanistan, before the fall of the Taliban in order to try to rescue her sister. During her travels she is befriended by an English speaking medic played by Salahuddin who turns out to be an exiled American political activist. The heroine of the film really did travel to Afghanistan, in an attempt to rescue her friend, and Salahuddin is an American in exile for a "political activity".
In response to criticism of his casting of Salahuddin, Makhmalbaf wrote in The Guardian newspaper that he (Makhmalbaf), had been tortured by the SAVAK
, of which the murder victim Tabatabai was "a prominent member", and that Tabatabai's brother
After the film was released, Doug Gansler
, then State's Attorney for Montgomery County
, later Attorney General of Maryland
, said that Salahuddin was still a wanted man.
In 2006 film-maker Jean-Daniel Lafond
released a film entitled American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan
, about Salahuddin. Lafond's film stirred controversy. Some reviewers called it "convincing, gripping, moving", while others thought it gave "credence to conspiracy theories debunked years ago" and sympathy for "a cold-blooded murderer".
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
most famous for his 1980 killing of Ali Akbar Tabatabai
Ali Akbar Tabatabai
Ali Akbar Tabatabaei was an Iranian exile and former press attache to the Iranian embassy in the United States under the Shah who became president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda, Maryland after the Islamic Revolution.A critic of Ayatollah Khomeini, Tabatabaei was shot in his Bethesda,...
, an Iranian dissident and critic of Ayatollah Khomeini, and his exile in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
.
Biography and activities
Dawud Salahuddin was born David Theodore Belfield in Roanoke Rapids, NC on November 10, 1950 and grew up in Bay Shore, New YorkBay Shore, New York
Bay Shore is a hamlet and a census-designated place located in the Town of Islip, Suffolk County, New York, USA. It is situated on the south shore of Long Island, adjoining the Great South Bay. Bay Shore celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2008. The population of the CDP was 23,852 at the time of...
, on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, in a church-going Baptist family of four boys and one girl.
According to Salahuddin, as a child the "most damage done" to him was the feeling he had that it was "an indecency, an insufficiency, certainly a shame not to be white." In 1963 he describes himself as having become politicized while watching news footage from Birmingham, Alabama, showing a police chief turn back civil-rights marchers with fire hoses and dogs, which caused him to develop "an implacable hatred toward all symbols of American authority." After graduation from high school, he attended Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
for one semester. He was attracted to Islam because it is "color-blind" and converted at the age of 18. He frequented an Iranian student center run by Bahram Nahidian. During the early 1970s he spent time visiting prisons around Washington to, "bring the message of Islam to black inmates". He met Said Ramadan
Said Ramadan
Said Ramadan was the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Said Ramadan was a major figure in that organization and was expelled from Egypt by Gamal Abdul Nasser for his activities. He moved to Saudi Arabia where he founded the World Islamic League, a charity and...
in 1975 and Ramadan later became his mentor. He was heavily influenced by Said Ramadan, an Egyptian lawyer and Islamic scholar. As an "angry and alienated" African-American, "my biggest aspiration was to bring America to its knees, but I didn't know how."
Salahuddin first worked for the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1980, shortly after the Islamic Revolution as a security guard at an Iranian diplomatic office in Washington. He accepted an assignment from the Islamic government to assassinate Ali Akbar Tabatabai
Ali Akbar Tabatabai
Ali Akbar Tabatabaei was an Iranian exile and former press attache to the Iranian embassy in the United States under the Shah who became president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda, Maryland after the Islamic Revolution.A critic of Ayatollah Khomeini, Tabatabaei was shot in his Bethesda,...
, a former member of the Shah's regime living in exile in Bethesda, Md.
According to a 2002 article in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine, Salahuddin first attempted to convince his Iranian employers to let him kill a more prominent American target, such as Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
or Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. , was a political action officer of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Plans who coordinated the Operation Ajax, which aimed to orchestrate a coup d’état against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq, and return Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran,...
— a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt who had orchestrated the 1953 plot to depose Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, and return the Shah to power. But Ali Akbar Tabatabai, an exile, was holding meetings of a counter-revolutionary group at his home in Bethesda at the time, and the Islamic government wanted him eliminated.
On July 22, 1980, Salahuddin showed up at Tabatabai's front door in Bethesda Maryland dressed as a mailman, telling Tabatabai's associate he had a special delivery package that required Tabatabai's signature. When Tabatabai appeared, Salahuddin shot him three times in the abdomen and fled. Tabatabai died 45 minutes later. Salahuddin made his way to Iran by way of Canada and Switzerland.
In Iran
Salahuddin arrived in Iran July 31, 1980 and has lived there most of the time with short periods in other Muslim countries and North Korea being careful not to expose himself to extradition back to the United States for homicide.In the thirty plus years as a fugitive he has worked as an English teacher, a war correspondent and a Web editor, fought the Soviets alongside the Afghan mujahedeen, and acted "in a film by one of Iran's leading directors in 2000."
He is married to an Iranian woman, speaks Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
and works as a freelance writer. He denies receiving any direct payments from the Iranian government aside from the $5000 he received for killing Tabatabai.
Salahuddin admitted to killing Tabatabai in 1995 on ABC's 20/20 programme when he was interviewed in Istanbul. In conversations with a reporter from The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine he denied the killing was "murderous", stating it was "an act of war ... In Islamic religious terms, taking a life is sometimes sanctioned and even highly praised, and I thought that event was just such a time."
According to the BBC, Salahuddin is known "by several other names," and US magazine Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
reported "he is also known as Hassan Abdul Rahman, a former editor of the state-sponsored English-language newspaper Iran Daily." According to Salahuddin he was a soldier with the mujahideen in Afghanistan from December 1986 to May 1988.
Salahuddin worked as chief online editor for Press TV
Press TV
Press TV is a 24-hour English language global news network owned by the Iranian government. Its headquarters are located in Tehran, Iran, with bureaux in Beirut , Damascus , London , Seoul and Washington DC ....
(Tehran-based English language international television news channel which is funded by the Iranian government) for three years before resigning in July following the disputed
2009 Iranian election protests
Protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential election against the disputed victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi occurred in major cities in Iran and around the world starting June 13, 2009...
presidential elections. He is "close" to prominent Iranian reformists film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is an Iranian film director, writer, editor, and producer. During 2007 he was the president of Asian Film Academy.Makhmalbaf's films have been widely presented in international film festivals in the past ten years. The multi-award-winning director, belongs to the new wave...
and Masoumeh Ebtekar
Masoumeh Ebtekar
Masoumeh Ebtekar is an Iranian scientist, journalist and politician. She is currently the director of Peace and Environment Center in Tehran.Ebtekar first achieved fame as the spokeswoman of the students who had occupied the US Embassy in 1979...
, the former spokeswoman for the hostage-takers
Iran hostage crisis
The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian...
at the United States Embassy in Tehran.
Despite the warrant for his arrest, Salahuddin has had some indirect contact with American authorities. Shortly after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993
1993 World Trade Center bombing
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, when a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 lb urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to knock the North Tower into the South Tower , bringing...
, US intelligence agents established contact with Salahuddin, who "began a back-channel relationship with American authorities and talked about returning to the United States to stand trial in the murder of Tabatabai." He sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno
Janet Reno
Janet Wood Reno is a former Attorney General of the United States . She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11...
dated March 5, 1994, proposing mediating between the U.S. and "certain key figures in the worldwide Islamic movement" in return for freedom from prosecution. No reply was given to his letter.
Film appearances
Salahuddin plays a sympathetic major character who aided the heroine of the 2001 film Kandahar by director Mohsen MakhmalbafMohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is an Iranian film director, writer, editor, and producer. During 2007 he was the president of Asian Film Academy.Makhmalbaf's films have been widely presented in international film festivals in the past ten years. The multi-award-winning director, belongs to the new wave...
. The heroine of the film is a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
woman, born in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, who slips back into Afghanistan, before the fall of the Taliban in order to try to rescue her sister. During her travels she is befriended by an English speaking medic played by Salahuddin who turns out to be an exiled American political activist. The heroine of the film really did travel to Afghanistan, in an attempt to rescue her friend, and Salahuddin is an American in exile for a "political activity".
In response to criticism of his casting of Salahuddin, Makhmalbaf wrote in The Guardian newspaper that he (Makhmalbaf), had been tortured by the SAVAK
SAVAK
SAVAK was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service established by Iran's Mohammad Reza Shah on the recommendation of the British Government and with the help of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency SAVAK (Persian: ساواک, short for سازمان اطلاعات و امنیت کشور...
, of which the murder victim Tabatabai was "a prominent member", and that Tabatabai's brother
does not understand that Belfield [Salahuddin] is also a victim — a victim of the ideal he believed in. His humanity, when he opened fire against his ideological enemy, was martyred by his idealism.
After the film was released, Doug Gansler
Doug Gansler
Douglas F. "Doug" Gansler is a Maryland politician and Attorney General of Maryland. Gansler won the Democratic nomination in the primary election on September 12, 2006, and beat Republican Scott Rolle in the general election on November 7, 2006...
, then State's Attorney for Montgomery County
Montgomery County, Maryland
Montgomery County is a county in the U.S. state of Maryland, situated just to the north of Washington, D.C., and southwest of the city of Baltimore. It is one of the most affluent counties in the United States, and has the highest percentage of residents over 25 years of age who hold post-graduate...
, later Attorney General of Maryland
Attorney General of Maryland
The Attorney General of Maryland is the chief legal officer of the State of Maryland in the United States and is elected by the people every four years with no term limits...
, said that Salahuddin was still a wanted man.
In 2006 film-maker Jean-Daniel Lafond
Jean-Daniel Lafond
Jean-Daniel Lafond CC is a French-born Canadian filmmaker, and the husband to the former Governor General Michaëlle Jean, making him the Viceregal Consort of Canada during her service.-Biography:...
released a film entitled American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan
American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan
American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan is a film, directed by Jean-Daniel Lafond, about an exiled American political activist named Dawud Salahuddin...
, about Salahuddin. Lafond's film stirred controversy. Some reviewers called it "convincing, gripping, moving", while others thought it gave "credence to conspiracy theories debunked years ago" and sympathy for "a cold-blooded murderer".