After crafting quiet Florida life, Shah of Iran’s alleged ‘chief torturer’ must now face trial

Guardian -Sept11th2025

Neighbors in the upscale Florida community of Windermere know them as Peter and Nancy, the seemingly friendly retired couple they wave to on morning walks, and who always appear to enjoy visits from their two high-flying grown daughters, one a respected professor of science at Harvard University.

Yet behind the high walls of their $3.6m lakefront mansion lies a darker, more closely guarded reality: “Peter” is actually Parviz Sabeti, the alleged head of secret police and chief torturer of the former Shah of Iran’s pre-revolutionary government, now facing a $225m lawsuit in Florida for atrocities committed in prisons in Tehran and elsewhere.

A district court judge ruled last month that the 89-year-old Sabeti – after crafting a successful and anonymous new life for himself and his family since fleeing his homeland in 1978 – must face trial in the case brought by three plaintiffs who describe themselves as former political prisoners.

In court filings, the plaintiffs say they were among thousands of people rounded up as perceived opponents of the shah by Savak, Iran’s notoriously brutal internal security and intelligence agency, and subjected to abuses at Sabeti’s personal direction – including rape, electric shocks, near-drownings and forced nail extraction.

One particularly barbaric piece of equipment, they allege, was Apollo, an electric chair named after the early US space program, which featured a metal helmet that amplified victims’ screams into their own ears.

men rising their hands — Former mutilated prisoners tortured by Savak, the political police during the reign of the shah, on 28 February 1980 in Iran. Photograph: Michel Artault/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Sabeti has not responded publicly to the allegations in the court filings, but has previously denied that Savak tortured detainees and claimed that he “always opposed torture”.

While Sabeti’s location was unknown for the best part of 45 years, his position in the Iranian government, and alleged role as an architect of its cruelty as director of Savak’s internal security department, was not.

He was identified as a fiercely loyal ally of the shah in a secret analysis by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) written in 1978, which was not released until 2018, and was “widely recognized as one of the most powerful and feared men in the shah’s regime … with the authority to apprehend, interrogate and prosecute opponents throughout the country”, according to the lawsuit.

Estimates vary of the number of Savak victims between the agency’s founding in 1957 and its dissolution in 1979, but many thousands were known to have been detained and tortured, with at least several hundred more killed.

The three plaintiffs, Iranian men living in California aged 68 to 85, allege they were abducted by Savak in Tehran, beaten into giving false confessions and served prison time. A motion by Sabeti’s lawyers to dismiss the case for breaching the statute of limitations was rejected by district court judge Gregory Presnell of the central district of Florida on 12 August. A trial could take place early next year.

According to the lawsuit, Sabeti “has spent the last four decades out of the public eye, concealing his whereabouts and identity”. He and his wife, Nasrin, 75, might even have remained incognito had he not been inadvertently “outed” by one of his daughters in a February 2023 tweet showing him at a rally in Los Angeles denouncing Iran’s Islamic government.

While the disclosure may have been inadvertent, and directly led to the plaintiffs’ attorneys being able to locate him and file the lawsuit, some believe it was part of a campaign by the Iranian diaspora in the US to help “sanitize” the history of the former shah’s deposed government and build momentum and support for a new pro-western regime.

Reza Pahlavi, sometimes called the “crown prince” of Iran as son of the former shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, told the Guardian in a 2023 interview, at the height of anti-Tehran protests, that he was working with allies to draw up a charter of democratic principles for any new Iranian government to follow. He has since portrayed himself as ready to replace the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and become interim head of state.

Sabeti, meanwhile, has worked as Pahlavi’s “security adviser”, according to a 2023 article posted to the website of the National Council of Resistance to Iran, a coalition of Iranian political figures portraying itself as a parliament in exile.

Efforts by the Guardian to reach Sabeti were unsuccessful, including emails and calls to his home, and messages seeking comment to all four of his attorneys listed in court documents.