Two unknown masked individuals shot and killed Saeed Karimian, the owner of GEM TV, on April 29, 2017, in the Maslak neighborhood of Istanbul, Turkey, according to news reports and a family member who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.
Turkish police later found the vehicle used in the killing, burned out in Kemerburgaz, a village outside Istanbul. According to the family member, the Turkish police investigated and confirmed that Karimian’s killers had Serbian passports and tried to cross borders to Montenegro and then Iran after the murder.
Karimian, a 45-year-old British citizen, founded the exiled GEM TV group in 2007 in London and later moved the headquarters to Istanbul while opening offices in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia, according to the group’s website. Karimian was best known for his work as a producer for the U.S. Congress-funded Voice of America Persian-language radio service, according to that family member and a former colleague who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.
GEM TV was banned by Iranian authorities in 2016; shortly after, Karimian started receiving continuous death threats from people attached to the Iranian government in connection to his journalism, that family member and two colleagues told CPJ.
In 2016, Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court convicted Karimian in absentia on charges of “spreading propaganda against the system” and “acting against national security” and sentenced him to 6 years in prison.
Turkish police arrested an internationally known Iranian drug trafficker, Naji Sharifi-Zindashti, in April 2018, and authorities charged him with Karimian’s killing. According to both U.S. and U.K. officials, Zindashti operated a criminal network targeting Iranian dissidents around the world on behalf of the Iranian government.
Turkish police later dropped all investigations in the case without announcing any results or explanations for the discontinuation, and Zindashti was released, according to Karimian’s family member and two colleagues.
The family member told CPJ they believed the police dropped the case despite efforts by Karimian’s family, attorney, and colleagues at GEM “due to the constant pressure of the Iranian government,” adding that police “never responded to any inquiries or shared any documents of their possible findings.”
Since 2012, the Iranian government reportedly harassed several members of Karimian’s family and colleagues both inside and outside the country, in connection to Karimian’s journalism, that family member told CPJ, adding that those family members and colleagues were also left with threatening messages for Karimian, such as not to travel to specific countries, such as Malaysia and the UAE, where Iranian intelligence agents have a strong presence.
The family member and Karimian’s colleagues told CPJ that in the last three months before the journalist was murdered, every time he was in Turkey, he received threatening phone calls from unknown Turkish and Iranian numbers.
CPJ’s emails to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York, Turkey’s Directorate General of Press and Information, and the Istanbul Police Department requesting comment on CPJ’s classification of Karimian’s killing as a targeted murder did not receive any replies.