Iran police chief says all oil-city bombers arrested
Laptop Battery Monday, 13th March 2006
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.
Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Aug. Iran's new police chief has ordered a new wave of arrests in the country' government sentiments. State Security Forces have been instructed to use brute force to combat dissent in particular among young people in the latest in a series of extensions of police power on the streets.
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