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Pedro Gonçalves

Homemade bomb on board plane raises tension ahead of Iran elections | World news | guar... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...mb-plane-tehran-iran-elections

Iran US Baluchistan Sistan-Baluchistan Khuzestan Ali Khamenei Hassan Firouzabadi Jundullah

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Rising political tensions in Iran ahead of watershed presidential elections on 12 June intensified today with the discovery of a homemade bomb on board a domestic airliner. The incident closely followed a fatal attack on a mosque that hardline Iranian leaders blamed on the US, Israel and Britain.
  • The Ahvaz incident followed an apparent suicide bombing on Thursday at a mosque in Zahedan, in Sistan-Baluchistan province in south-eastern Iran, which killed 25 people and wounded more than 100. Three men convicted of planning the explosion were publicly executed yesterday.
  • Khuzestan and Sistan-Baluchistan provinces have witnessed numerous attacks attributed to separatists, ethnic and religious groups, and mujahideen resistance fighters since the 1979 revolution. Oil-rich Khuzestan, which borders Iraq, is home to Iran's Arab minority. Sistan-Baluchistan, bordering Pakistan, has a high concentration of Sunni Muslims. Iran is predominantly Shia.
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  • A Sunni opposition group known as Jundullah (God's Soldiers), which Iran links to al-Qaida and the US, claimed responsibility for the mosque bomb.
  • The Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television said a man claiming to represent Jundullah called it saying the bombing was a suicide attack aimed at Basiji forces, a religious militia, that were meeting in the mosque to co-ordinate election strategy.
  • Iran's leaders have repeatedly blamed US and Israeli "spy agencies" for arming and assisting insurgent groups, including dissident Kurds living in western Iran. They say the aim is to destabilise Iran and promote regime change.
  • Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader and a strong, public backer of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bid to win a second term, added his weight to the claims. "No one can doubt that the hands of … some interfering powers and their spying services are bloodied by the blood of the innocent," he said.
  • Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, Iran's armed forces chief of staff, also blamed outside forces, pointing the finger at Britain in particular. "The attempts made by colonialism, Zionism and on top of them England for sowing discord between Shias and Sunnis have yielded no result," he said.
  • Any direct or indirect US involvement in fomenting pre-election tensions is considered unlikely, given Obama's new policy of engagement with Iran. Israel, which believes Iran poses an existential threat, takes a harder line.
  • Unconfirmed reports published in the US last year said the Bush administration obtained $400m in "off-the-books" congressional funding to finance covert operations aimed at assisting minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organisations inside Iran. It is unclear whether these alleged operations have continued since Obama took office.
Pedro Gonçalves

Mossad 'posed as CIA to recruit fighters' - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...20121142232610383.html

US Israel Iran CIA Mossad

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Agents with Israel's spy agency, Mossad, have posed as CIA agents in operations to recruit members of the Pakistani group Jundallah, according to a report in US-based Foreign Policy magazine. Using US dollars and passports, the agents passed themselves off as members of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the operations, according to memos from 2007 and 2008, said the report which was published on Friday. It is unclear whether the recruitment programme is ongoing.
  • "Israel has done this before. I know of a report very widely accepted in the US of Israeli Mossad agents in the United States, actually recruiting American Muslims," Mark Perry, who authored the report, told Al Jazeera.
  • Jundallah [which translates to "soldiers of God"] says it is fighting for the interests of Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province's large ethnic Baluch community, whose members, unlike most Iranians, mainly follow the Sunni branch of Islam. The Baluch straddle the border with neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan and Jundallah fighters have taken advantage of the unrest in the region to find safe haven in the border area.
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  • According to the US government, the group is responsible for targeting Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children, Foreign Policy said. In July it claimed responsibility for attacking the Grand Mosque in Sistan-Baluchistan capital of Zahedan, reportedly targeting members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, killing 28 people.
  • Tensions in the US-Iran relationship have also spiked, most recently following the car-bombing of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Foreign Policy, however, said there was no evidence of a link between the scientist's killing and Jundallah.
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran official blames U.S. in deadly mosque bombing | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE54R5O320090529

Iran Baluchistan Pakistan US Jundullah

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 29 May 09 - Cached
  • An Iranian official accused the United States on Friday of involvement in a mosque bombing that killed more than 20 people in volatile south-eastern Iran, two weeks before the Islamic Republic's presidential election. Jalal Sayyah, of the governor's office in Sistan-Baluchestan province
  • Sistan-Baluchestan province, home to Iran's mostly Sunni ethnic Baluchis, is the scene of frequent clashes between security forces and heavily armed drug smugglers and bandits.
  • Iran has previously accused the United States, its arch-foe, of backing Sunni rebels operating on its border with Pakistan, who Tehran says are linked to the Islamist al Qaeda network.
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  • "It has been confirmed that those behind the terrorist act in Zahedan were hired by America and the arrogance's other hands," Sayyah told the semi-official Fars News Agency.
  • A bomb attack in Zahedan in early 2007 which killed 18 Revolutionary Guards was claimed by Jundollah (God's Soldiers), an insurgent group that says it is fighting for the rights of Iran's Sunni minority but which Tehran says is part of al Qaeda.
  • Defense analyst Paul Beaver said it was "highly unlikely" that the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama, who is seeking to engage Tehran diplomatically after three decades of mutual mistrust, would support Sunni insurgents in Iran.
  • In April, Iran's intelligence minister said it had arrested a group of people linked to Israel who were planning bombings ahead of the June 12 election, in which hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seeking a second four-year term.
  • The explosion, which some officials and media suggested was a suicide bombing, took place on a religious holiday in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim country. More than 80 people were wounded.
  • "The terrorists, who were equipped by America in one of our neighboring countries, carried out this criminal act in their efforts to create religious conflict and fear and to influence the presidential election," Sayyah told state radio.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Iran 'arrests leader of Sunni militants Jundullah' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8529625.stm

Iran Jundullah Baluchistan

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 23 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Iranian authorities have arrested the leader of the Sunni Muslim militant group Jundullah, according to reports on state television.
  • He is said to be behind a series of deadly bombings and killings in Sistan-Baluchistan province. Last October 42 people, including six Revolutionary Guard commanders, were killed in a suicide bombing in Zahedan.
  • Jundullah was founded in 2002 to defend the Baluchi minority in the poor, remote and lawless region of south-east Iran. The group has been using neighbouring Pakistan as a base, and in the past the Iranians have accused Pakistan of allowing them to operate there.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Iran hangs Sunni militant leader Abdolmalek Rigi - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...10359415.stm

Iran Jundullah

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 21 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Jundullah has said it was responsible for a string of high-profile attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan, including a suicide bombing near the Pakistani border that killed 42 people, including six senior Revolutionary Guards commanders, and a bombing in a Shia mosque in Zahedan that killed 25 people.
  • Shortly after his arrest, state media reported that Mr Rigi had admitted that he had been on his way to a meeting with a "high-ranking person" at the US military base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan when he was captured. "They said they would co-operate with us and would give me military equipment," he said in a video statement broadcast on Iranian TV.
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