AP, April 13 - The Berlin court's decision has created the worst diplomatic crisis between Iran and the West since 1989, when Khomeini called on Muslims to kill British author Salman Rushdie for blasphemy.

The court convicted four men in the 1992 murders of four Iranian dissidents in Berlin and said the order to kill came from Iran's top leaders. Prosecutors earlier implicated Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Hashemi Rafsanjani.

After the court ruling, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and all European Union countries except Greece recalled their ambassadors from Tehran…

Ansar'e Hezbollah, a hard-line group that led protests Friday, has threatened to storm the embassy or launch suicide attacks on the compound unless Germany apologizes by Monday.

AFP, April 11 - Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ridiculed the European Union on Friday for its "pathetic" attempts to punish Iran for its alleged role in international terrorism, saying it was like a 60-year-old bride playing hard-to-get with a young man…

"You have repeatedly made this mistake like in the Rushdie affair, when you all recalled your ambassadors. But at the end you came back in disgrace and apologized," he said…

"We don't even feel it whether you are here or not. It is you who need us," the president said, his voice cracking with anger.

The Washington Post, April 12- … Mesbahi [Iranian former official who testified in German court] had served until 1995 as an aide to President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He also was one of Iran's most senior intelligence officials, who supervised key foreign intelligence networks among the Iranian diaspora in Europe… He described in meticulous detail how targets for assassination abroad were approved by a powerful elite council known as the Committee for Secret Operations, and how the orders for hit squads required the signatures of Rafsanjani and Ali Khamenei, Iran's paramount religious leader

Reuter, April 13 - German media have speculated that prosecutors might now try to press charges against Velayati, since the court said the foreign minister was one of those who sat on a secret committee which ordered political assassinations.

Iran Zamin News Agency, April 11 - Following the verdict by Germany's court, Massoud Rajavi, the NCR president, stated that the government of Italy must now reopen the case of the March 16, 1993 assassination by Tehran's terrorists of Mohammad Hossien Naghdi, the representative of the NCR in Italy.

AFP, April 11 - The United States, emboldened by a German court decision linking Tehran to a political murder, renewed its drive Friday to pare down Europe's buoyant trade ties with Iran.

"We are in active discussion on this," a White House official said Friday. The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said Europe's ties with Iran were shaping up as a top agenda item for President Bill Clinton's meeting with European leaders in The Hague on May 28.

Reuter, April 11 - Norway, which severed relations with Tehran almost two years ago, called on the European Union on Friday to consider imposing trade sanctions on Iran, a Foreign Ministry official said.

Iranian Aide Linked To Bombing Suspect, The Washington Post, April 13

U.S. and Saudi intelligence authorities have linked a senior Iranian government official to a group of Shiite Muslims suspected of bombing an American military compound in Saudi Arabia last year, according to American and Arab officials.

Intelligence information indicates Brig. Ahmad Sherifi, a senior Iranian intelligence officer and a top official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards, met roughly two years before the bombing with a Saudi Shiite arrested March 18 in Canada, the officials said. The man, Hani Abd Rahim Sayegh, had fled Saudi Arabia shortly after the June 25…, according to Canadian court records…

The intelligence tying Sherifi to Sayegh has persuaded a growing number of officials in Washington and Riyadh of Iran's direct involvement in the attack, U.S. and Arab officials said last week. "Iran was the organizing force behind it," one U.S. official said Friday…

Sherifi is a top Iranian intelligence officer, whose duties include organizing Hezbollah cells in Arab countries around the Persian Gulf, U.S. and Arab sources said. He is well-known to Saudi officials because he was implicated during a trial in Bahrain last year for 15 Bahraini Shiite dissidents convicted of several hotel and restaurant bombings…

One of the two leaders of the Bahraini dissidents, Ali Ahmed Kadhem Mutaqawwi, said in his confession that Sherifi, also known as Abu Jalal, had selected him to recruit other Bahrainis studying in Qom and then helped him form the military wing of Hezbollah-Bahrain…

Mutaqawwi also said Sherifi had provided the Bahraini plotters with financial support, through checks signed in Sherifi's name and drawn from a Revolutionary Guard bank account in Iran.

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