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Iran Focus
 Tehran,
Iran, Mar. 13 – The head of the State Security Forces, Iran’s paramilitary police,
announced on Monday that all those responsible for several recent spates of
bombings in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, south-west Iran, had been
arrested and claimed they had ties to Britain.
“The Ministry of Intelligence and Security is pursuing the files of those
arrested for the recent events in Khuzestan. The SSF has played a noticeable
role in this regard”, Brigadier General Ismaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam told reporters while in the town of Khorramabad.
“The roots of these bombings are from abroad and [the attacks] were planned
by untouched networks”, Moqaddam said. Britain was organising the networks, he said without elaborating.
He added that the networks were attempting to disrupt Iran’s
internal security through such attacks.
The general, a former senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps, is hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s brother-in-law.
Last week, Iran’s
Minister of Intelligence and Security said that authorities had identified
and apprehended more than 50 people in connection with the attacks.
“Unfortunately, these individuals had ties to the enemies of the Islamic
Republic of Iran abroad”, Hojjatoleslam Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezhei
said.
There were several spates of bombings in the troubled region earlier this
year and in 2005. Ahwaz,
the capital of the Arab-dominated province, has been the scene of unremitting
anti-government protests since early 2005.
A string of top Iranian officials including hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Britain of being
behind the bombings.
London has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attacks.
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