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CAIRO - A top Iranian official's son living in the United States told an Arabic-language weekly that a pro-Iranian militant group carried out the 1996 attack in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 US airmen.
Ahmad Rezai, son of a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, said in an interview to appear Friday in the Arab weekly Al-Watan Al-Arabi that "members of the Hezbollah-Gulf based in Iran planned and carried out the attack with indirect support from the Iranian government," according to an advance copy of the interview obtained here by AFP Wednesday.
Gulf news media have previously reported the existence of a Hezbollah-Gulf organization and accused it of plotting unrest in Bahrain and other Arab Gulf monarchies.
According to Rezai, Iran's "spiritual guide Ali Khamenei and former Iranian president (Akbar) Hashemi Rafsanjani are directly involved in giving support to extremist organizations in the Arab Gulf countries and elsewhere in the world.
Cleric Activist Shot Dead, Reuter,
July 15
TEHRAN - A hardline Iranian newspaper said on Wednesday an Islamic seminary student activist had been shot to death and alleged that backers of a dissident senior cleric were suspected of involvement.
The daily Jomhuri Eslami said the bullet-riddled body of Mehdi Karami, known for his activities against supporters of dissident Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, had been found outside the city of Qom.
"It is said that (Montazeri's supporters) are suspected of involvement in this crime," the newspaper said.
The Shi'ite holy city of Qom has been the scene of violent demonstrations by hardliners since Montazeri questioned the authority of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a speech in November.
Montazeri's home and offices in Qom were attacked and the dissident cleric has since lived under house arrest and been prevented from teaching.
15 Hanged in Public, Iran Zamin New Agency, July 15
To terrorize and intimidate the public, the mullahs' regime publicly hanged 15 people on the charge of drug trafficking in the city of Sarakhas in the northeastern province of Khorassan.
In the past, the ruling theocracy has executed many political prisoners and opponents on the pretext of drug smuggling.
This brings to at least 240 the number people hanged in public during Mohammad Khatami's tenure as the mullahs' president.
In recent months, in the course of social uprisings, students' protests and workers' strikes, the clerical regime has made widespread arrests across the country.
Iran Prison Fire Kills Seven Inmates,
Reuter, July 15
TEHRAN - A fire started by a burning cigarette stub killed seven prisoners at a jail in northeastern Iran, the official Iranian news agency IRNA said on Wednesday.
It said the blaze at the Mashhad city prison on Tuesday began in a carpentry workshop.
The fire, which also injured two other prisoners, then spread to two rows of cells, the agency added.
Iran's media and officials often complain that prisons are overcrowded.
Suspicious Fire In Mashad Prison, Iran
Zamin News Agency, July 15
With a delay of more than a 24 hours, the mullahs' regime announced in state television that the fire in Vakil-Abad prison in Mashad.
According to sources in Iran, in the course of this fire, scores of prisoners either died in the blaze or were injured. Some of them are reported to be in critical condition.
On frequent occasions in the past, the clerical regime has deliberately set prisons on fire, including the prison in Rasht, in the northern Gilan province, to murders many political prisoners.
Mashad's Vakil-Abad prison is one of the most notorious prisons in Iran, where tens of thousands of Mojahedin prisoners have been either brutally tortured or executed so far.
The Iranian Resistance in a statement called "for the dispatch of an international delegation to Iran to investigate the cause of the fire in Mashad prison, the reasons for the delay to put out the fire and the inhuman conditions in other prisons in the country."