This morning, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Washington, DC, revealed new details of the background and role of Brig. Gen. Ahmad Beladi Behbahani, the defector from the mullahs' regime who is Deputy Intelligence Minister for Counter-Intelligence, as well as information on Tehran's role in the Pan Am 103 bombing.

The NCR, which revealed Behbahani's presence in Turkey in a statement on May 24, told reporters that when Rafsanjani became President in 1989, Behbahani set up and took charge of the Presidential Intelligence Unit. The Unit determined the targets of the regime's terrorist assaults and decided which agency would carry them out. So key was Behbahani's role that the building housing the Intelligence Unit was known as the "Behbahani Building."

Behbahani, who is currently in his mid-forties, was directly in charge of the clerical regime's terrorist activities in Lebanon. During this period, he had many contacts with non-Iranian terrorists, whom he used to carry out operations.

After the terrorist activities of the regime were concentrated in the Ministry of Intelligence, Behbahani moved to the Ministry and became deputy for counter-intelligence. As such, he became a member of the Counter-intelligence Council, the decision-making body for most of the regime's terrorist assassinations abroad.

Behbahani was so important to the regime that as a measure of his approval, Rafsanjani gave him one of the mullahs' highest medals, in particular for his key role in the assassination of the NCR's Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Kazem Rajavi, in Geneva in 1990.

The NCR also revealed that the explosives used in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing were transferred through the airport in Frankfurt by an Intelligence agent by the name of Hossein Marvastizadeh, who was then in charge of security for the Iran Air office, and his accomplice Talebian, who was the head of the Iran Air office in Frankfurt. After the bombing, Marvastizadeh returned to Iran, where he is currently the head of the airport in the city of Yazd, central Iran.
 

Defector Fingers Iran For Bombings, CBS News (Internet Edition), June 5

… Intelligence sources tell CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin that after the Pan Am 103 bombing, the U.S. intercepted communications that strongly suggested Iran had ordered the deed.
 

Tens of Thousands of Demonstrators Chant "Down With Mullahs' Regime", Iran Zamin News Agency, June 6

Tens of thousands of people in the northeastern city of Mashad used Khatami's visit to the province as a pretext and staged a series of antigovernment demonstrations in different districts of the city on Monday and chanted "Guns, Tanks, [the paramilitary] Bassijis are no longer effective," "Free all political prisoners," and "Down with the mullahs' regime." Hundreds of demonstrators were wounded or arrested by Revolutionary Guards and the security forces.

Crowds that gathered on the precinct outside the mausoleum of Imam Reza began chanting against the powerful overlord of the province, the Khamenei-appointed mullah Vaez Tabssi. "Dictator Tabassi, let go of your throne," "Tabassi is the Despot of Khorassan" and "Stop Tabassi's plunder," echoed in the arena.

Hurling a variety of objects such as shoes and sticks at the podium, young people did not allow Vaez Tabassi to complete his speech. They also prevented the province's Governor-General Mehr Alizadeh from making a speech. Khatami was forced to cut his remarks short and repeatedly asked the crowd to refrain from chanting slogans.

After Khatami's speech, plainclothes security agents and Revolutionary Guards members acting under the cover of Ansar Hezbollah charged at the crowd, beating the people viciously. As scuffles spread, the tens of thousands of demonstrators fanned out in different directions.
 

Iranian Threats to "Satanic Verses" Editor Raises Concern, Agence France Presse, June 3

HAMBURG, Germany - The German authorities "are taking very seriously" a death threat against the German-language editor of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses", the weekly Der Spiegel has reported in its Monday edition.

Iranian editor Dawoud Nemati, now living in exile in the west German city of Essen, was targeted by an Islamic "death sentence", or fatwa, published on May 5 in the Iranian weekly Jebhe (Front), which is close to Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, according to Der Speigel.

The death threat was being "taken very seriously", a spokesman for the interior ministry of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia told AFP on Saturday, adding: "Mr. Nemati has been under additional protective surveillance since May 5."

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