The execution generated tremendous internal and foreign criticism against the increasingly oppressive government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and helped cement its reputation as a serious violator of human rights.
By the time of his execution, the small group Zia-Zarifi had helped form along with Bijan Jazani had developed into the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas, who posed a serious challenge to the Shah's government.
He joined the youth wing of the Tudeh Party in 1953, shortly before the CIA-engineered coup d'etat of August 18, 1953, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq.
On 15 Khordad 1342 (5 June 1963), nationwide protests broke out against the Shah's efforts to exile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, by then a highly vocal critic of the imperial government.
The movement was based in the seminaries of Qom and the more religious rural areas, but the leftist students immediately took to the streets in support of the anti-Shah protesters, which resulted in massive demonstrations and riots.
Rather, Iranian activists saw the only way forward as revolutionary overthrown of the entire monarchical system, inspired by the recent successes of armed movements in Viet Nam, Cuba, Algeria, and Palestine.
When Hassan Zia-Zarifi completed his military conscription in 1965, he met Bijan Jazani, a noted young leftist activist with a long history in the youth wing of the Tudeh Party.
According to Jazani, during meetings in Zia-Zarifi's house, a small nucleus of like-minded young university graduates came together to discuss how to implement the ideology of armed resistance in Iran.
In early 1968, Jazani was arrested; Zarifi went into hiding and evaded capture for another month until he was betrayed by Abbas Shahriari, a SAVAK double agent who was a high level Tudeh party official.
Observers from various human rights groups, including Amnesty International, as well as the British Parliament, were horrified by the prisoners' accounts of torture and shocked by the utter disregard for legal process.
Zia-Zarifi viewed prison as an opportunity to gain greater familiarity with Iranian society and to establish, by example and through political argument, a model of resistance to the Shah's government.
The OIPFG began conducting surveys of Iran's mountainous and verdant northern provinces because it believed the area provided ideal ground for initiating a successful guerrilla uprising.
On 19 Bahman 1349 (8 February 1971) nine members of the group launched their first attack on the gendarmerie post of the small village of Siahkal, situated close to Lahijan, Zia-Zarifi's hometown.
The attack proved disastrous: the group's contact in the village, a school teacher, had already been captured by SAVAK, and the local farmers immediately turned against the guerillas.
In Khordad 1350 (May 1971) Zia-Zarifi faced another military tribunal and this time the prosecution successfully called for the death penalty, a verdict upheld on appeal.
The verdict aroused immediate international furor, especially because Zia-Zarifi was already imprisoned at the time of the Siahkal incident and the case against him rested almost entirely on supposed confessions extracted under torture.
Zia-Zarifi himself took advantage of the forum presented by the trial to denounce the severe torture he had endured, including being whipped, electrocuted, subjected to extended hunger, and deprived of necessary medical attention.
Facing a rapidly growing militancy, the Shah gave SAVAK free rein to extract a public apology and confession from the prisoners, particularly Zia-Zarifi and Jazani, viewed as the movement's ideological founders.
After the OIPFG assassinated General Zia Farsiu, the Chief Military Prosecutor, SAVAK again brought Zia-Zarifi to the notorious Komite prison in Tehran, where he suffered through severe torture again purely as a punitive measure.
After the 1979 revolution, a notorious SAVAK agent, Bahman Naderipour, known by his alias of Tehrani, provided an admission during his trial about the circumstances of the death of Zia-Zarifi and others.
[1] There are strong reasons to believe that Naderipour may have been subjected to severe torture after being detained by the revolutionary government, therefore the details of his narrative which was obtained under duress is questionable by all standards.
Zia-Zarifi was found guilty in a court of law for planning the assassination of Iranian officials, U.S. advisor's on assignment in Iran and simple peasants at Siahkal.