Recognition, friendship, money: What Kassra Zargaran was looking for in the Hells Angels

For years, Kassra Zargaran has worked his way up the hierarchy of the Hells Angels from hangaround to member.

Recognition, friendship, money: What Kassra Zargaran was looking for in the Hells Angels

For years, Kassra Zargaran has worked his way up the hierarchy of the Hells Angels from hangaround to member. Violence is natural, loyalty is essential. That's what power and good business is for. But then Zargaran has doubts.

"I had a good reputation, was a stable boy who doesn't allow himself to be said, can't be suppressed and is also able to defend himself." This is how Kassran Zargaran describes himself in his early 20s. Today he is 35, a former member of the Hells Angels, has served a long prison sentence and lives under police protection. "My life is pretty boring now, but I've lived my life for two, maybe even for three," he says in an interview with ntv.de.

He wrote a book about this life together with the author Nils Frenzel. "The Persian - How I became a Hells Angel when a key witness opened up in court and ended up in witness protection" has just been published. It is an attempt at self-explanation and at the same time a lesson in destructive images of masculinity.

Zargaran was born in 1986 to an Iranian father and a German-Chilean mother in Norderstedt, a small town 20 kilometers north of Hamburg. Even at school, he has violent outbursts when he feels he has been treated unfairly. After injuring a teacher, the father sends the now 15-year-old to Iran for a few months. "It was just shit for me, I wanted to go back. I grew up in Germany, it's my homeland," he says today about the trip.

The probably hoped-for educational effect of the trip does not materialize. After his return, Zargaran no longer goes to school, instead he goes to the boxing studio and shortly thereafter joins the criminal half-world on Hamburg's Reeperbahn and the red-light district in the neighborhood. "We were always on the go, saw that the bigger ones were making money, illegally or semi-criminally. That's where I orientated myself. Then I had the contacts and I kept slipping into it," says Zargaran.

He is still attempting a middle-class life, having just become a father. The now 20-year-old starts a cooking apprenticeship. But a quarrel escalated again and the apprenticeship ended afterwards. "And then I said, now everyone can kiss my ass. Now I'm doing what I was most successful in and that was on the street in the red-light district. I was accepted and recognized there." Zargaran works as a bouncer and pimp when he is asked if he would like to help set up a support charter for the Hells Angels in Kiel. "I went there a couple of times, it worked for both sides and that's how I got into the scene."

Zargaran finds what he misses most here: recognition, clear rules and a male community. In a study on the subject of rocker crime, a research group from the Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute (KFN) came to the conclusion that rocker clubs are both a male subculture and organized crime. Only men are allowed to become members, the researchers write that there is a very classic role model within the scene. The "traditionally proud ideal of masculinity" meets the members' need for power and honor. Zargaran is more than willing to submit to the rules of the Hells Angels for this. "When you're out and about in this milieu, you quickly understand that the law of the strongest prevails," he says. "You can't shine with eloquence and power of speech, but you have to be able to defend yourself, get your things sorted out and have assertiveness."

The "Persian", as he is quickly called because of his half-Iranian origin, gets his things sorted out. And he wants to sit at the table with the important people. In Berlin, Kadir Padir has just made a sensational change from the Bandidos to the Hells Angels. Zargaran curries favor with the new strongman and works his way up the club hierarchy, from hangaround to prospect, until finally becoming a full member of the "Hells Angels Berlin City" in 2013. "I didn't think for a second that it could backfire. It was like that for me, what does it cost the world, nobody can do anything to me."

It is sect-like structures that now determine his life, with immutable hierarchies. The social contacts are largely limited to the Hells Angels and their meetings. Test after test follows, in which loyalty to the club has to be proven again and again. Zaragaran describes it as a very lively life. "You travel a lot and get to know a lot of people." It goes without saying that violence is used again and again.

But ever since he became a member, he has occasionally had doubts. Padir is increasingly proving to be an authoritarian ruler who always interprets the supposedly democratic and just rules of the Hells Angels in the way that suits him best. "At some point I got to the point where I said I had to get out of here, but I hadn't found a way out yet. I didn't have the backbone for the consequences of moving away from Berlin economically and technically," he says.

Then came January 10, 2014. A group of twelve Hells Angels stormed a betting shop on Berlin's Residenzstrasse. Its operator Tahir Ö. is close to the Bandidos. And he is said to have injured a Hells Angel in a fight in front of a nightclub. The revenge action lasts only 25 seconds and is documented by surveillance cameras. O. dies hit by six bullets. Among the hooded attackers is Zargaran.

Along with the others involved, he is charged with murder. But now his loyalty to the club is no longer strong enough to comply with the law of silence. Zargaran hires his own defense attorney and decides to testify as a key witness. In the end, he is also convicted of murder, but with a 12-year sentence he gets off lighter than most of his co-defendants. In the process it becomes clear that he had already fallen out of favor with Padir.

"At some point you have to say, I'm going left or right now," he explains the decision today. "The fun is over with murder and when you throw hand grenades and slash people so that they die long and painfully. I accepted a lot and got my prison sentence for it, but that was the end of it." In the meantime he has served his sentence, for almost seven years he was mostly in solitary confinement for security reasons, because the Hells Angels do not appreciate traitors. That's why Zargaran no longer lives in Berlin. His previous partnership broke up, and the relationship with his daughter was difficult for many years.

When he talks about the years as Hells Angel, astonishment and suppression mix. Amazement that he was so naïve and willing to follow the rules of the Hells Angels. But to this day he still sees his own role as someone who had limits when it came to the use of force, who abided by the rules and always wanted his business to be independent of the club's criminal structures. It is important to him that the book tells his point of view. That he has changed too. "I'm better at dealing with difficult situations. Before, if a cashier was rude, I'd slap the cash register. Now I just pay and leave."

He said he spent three or four years in prison exploring himself. He asked himself where the search for recognition came from, the need to always be in the foreground. "I had to go into corners that aren't nice. You have to be ready to question yourself. I did it and understood a lot." Today he no longer wants to be a great guy for everyone. "I get along well with my people, I communicate well, I have sufficient impulse control. I'm quite satisfied. I think I'm a good version of myself today."