The victims included more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens,[6][7] and were killed by a variety of means such as car crashes, stabbings, shootings in staged robberies, and injections with potassium to simulate heart attack.[8] The pattern of murders did not come to light until late 1998 when Dariush Forouhar, his wife Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar, and three dissident writers were murdered over a span of two months.[9]
After the murders were publicized, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei denied the government was responsible, and blamed "Iran's enemies".[10] In mid-1999, after great public outcry and journalistic investigation in Iran and publicity abroad,[1
