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TEHRAN - A top Iranian army officer, Brigadier General Ali Sayad Shirazi, was killed outside his home here on Saturday, state radio reported.
In a telephone statement to AFP in Nicosia, a spokesman for the main armed Iranian opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen, said it had carried out the attack.
"Mujahedeen command headquarters inside Iran reported that this morning several Mujahedeen operational units punished General Ali Sayad Shirazi," the spokesman for the opposition group said. "To carry out the operation, Mujahedeen operational units brought a large area of northern Tehran under their control," he said.
[According to a statement by the Mojahedin, Operation "Tolou" was carried out in the memory of Ms. Tahereh Tolou, one of the hundreds of Mojahedin brutally murdered in summer 1988 during National Liberation Army's Eternal Light operation. After savage tortures, the mullahs' agents stabbed her in the heart and hanged her from her feet on a cliff, leaving her body there for several days. A picture of this shocking scene is available.]
Shirazi, who was in his 50s, was deputy chief of the joint staff command of the armed forces and military advisor to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
One of the army's senior commanders, Shirazi personally led several of Iran's major offensives in the 1980-88 war with Iraq, and rose to command the army's main headquarters alongside the then commander of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, General Mohsen Rezai.
Considered close to the conservative faction of the Islamic regime, his exploits during the Iran-Iraq war earned him the nickname "Iron Man."
In 1989, Shirazi was awarded the highest military distinction in the Iranian armed forces, the Fath (Conquest) medal.
Following the war, he became an advisor to central command, which comes under the direct authority of Khamenei.
He was recently promoted by Khamenei, who is also supreme commander of the Iranian armed forces. The promotion to the rank of general had been due to come into effect shortly.
In its statement to AFP in Nicosia, the People's Mujahedeen said Shirazi had been "punished" for war crimes.
"Shirazi, known as the Butcher of Kurdistan and responsible for purging and executing military personnel in the unpatriotic war with Iraq and hundreds of Mujahedeen combattants, was killed as he was being escorted by a group of heavily armed Revolutionary Guards acting as his bodyguards," the Mujahedeen spokesman said.
"His crimes amounted to specific war
crimes and crimes against humanity," the spokesman said.
Khatami Heaps Praise on Criminal Sayyad Shirazi, Iran Zamin News Agency, April 10
In a message to regime's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Khatami, offered his condolences on the death of Sayyad Shirazi and described the infamous "Butcher of Kurdistan" as a "selfless commander of Islam and honorable son of Iran." Khatami also described Sayyad's inhuman crimes as "honest services."
Sayyad Shirazi was a war criminal and perpetrator of crimes against humanity on the basis of all international instruments on such crimes.
The praise heaped on Sayyad Shirazi
by Khatami shows the hollow nature of the latter's rhetoric on civil society
and the rule of law.
Clerical Regime Threatens to Launch Attack, Iran Zamin News Agency, April 10
Today, the Iranian Resistance warned against the air raids, missile attack, and terrorist operations by the clerical regime against the bases of the Mojahedin and National Liberation Army in Iraqi territory.
GC Maj. Gen. Rahim Safavi, Commander
of the Revolutionary Guards Corps today announced that the Guards Corps
and the Army are prepared for such attacks. He said: "The Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps and the Iranian Army will take avenge Shirazi's killing."
NCR: Resistance Operations Are Consistent With Geneva Convention, Agence France Presse, April 11
TEHRAN - Iranian leaders demanded a western clampdown Sunday on the main armed opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen.
The National Council of the Iranian Resistance, the umbrella group led by the Mujahedeen, responded in a statement received in Nicosia that "all of its operations are undertaken in the framework of the Geneva Conventions" [and only directed at military targets and the regime's armed forces who are directly involved in the massacre and suppression of the Iranian people.]
"Consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, rebellion, 'as a last recourse' against the religious fascism ruling Iran, is the legitimate right of the Iranian people," the organization said.