GERMAN police mounted a massive security operation around a Berlin court yesterday in advance of today's verdict in the "Mykonos" case, in which five people are accused of murdering Iranian dissidents at a restaurant in the city in 1992.
Prosecutors allege that the machine gun attack was ordered bye the Iranian government, and the German authorities last year issued a warrant for the arrest Col Tehran's intelligence chief, Mr Ali FalIahian. Iran denies any involvement in the murders and dismisses the trial as a political stunt inspired by Israel.
In recent weeks, senior political figures in Tehran have warned that a verdict that implicates the Iranian government could cause a crisis in the country's relationship with Bonn.
But Foreign Minister Mr Ali Akbar Velayati sought yesterday to play down the significance of the case and its impact on bilateral relations between Bonn and Tehran.
"Germany should not think that the Mykonos' verdict will turn the world upside down. We'll see how the verdict turns out, but we still believe that the trial is politically motivated. But we are still interested in good relations with Germany," he said.
Mr Kazem Darabi, an Iranian, is accused with four Lebanese of gunning down the Iranian Kurdish leader, Mr Sadegh Sharafkandi, and three colleagues at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin on September 17th, 1992.
Mr Sharafkandi, who was regarded by Tehran as one of its most significant political opponents, was in Berlin to attend a meeting of the Socialist International.
The evidence against the five accused men is compelling, with fingerprints all over a getaway car and on a weapon which also bore blood from one of the victims. But the most explosive element of the prosecution case concerns the defendants' alleged links with the Iranian government.
Prosecutors claim that Mr Darabi was an Iranian intelligence agent who functioned as Tehran's German based link with the Lebanese Hizbullah. They allege the assassination was ordered by Mr Fallahian and approved by Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which is chaired by President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and includes Mr Velayati and the spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini.
Bonn says it will review its relationship with Tehran after tomorrow's verdict and diplomatic sources suggested yesterday that, if the Iranian leadership is found to have ordered the 1992 attack, action will be swift.
One source suggested that all 15 European Union member states could temporarily withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran in protest.
A guilty verdict will undoubtedly place a question mark over Bonn's policy of "critical dialogue" with Tehran, under which it has built up an extensive network of economic and diplomatic links between the two countries.
Germany is Iran's biggest trading partner and almost half of Iran's exports, apart from oil, go to Germany.
Bonn's cosy relationship with Tehran has upset the United States, which operates a strongly negative policy towards the Islamic state. But Germany claims that its quiet diplomacy helped to free US hostages in Lebanon and has made progress in securing the release off the missing Israeli airman, Mr Ron Arad.
Bonn's greatest fear is that Iran will react to tomorrow's verdict by ordering terrorist attacks on German soil or by retaliating against German citizens in Iran.
Tehran announced this week that it plans to sue 24 German companies it accuses of helping Iraq to produce chemical weapons during the 1980-1988 war.
Some German observers saw the move as a sign of worsening relations between the two countries, but Social Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Karsten Voight, claims that the Mykonos case has already damaged relations so much that Germany can do little to repair them.
