In this major attack, carried out by Zahra Rajabi and Ali Moradi military units, considerable damage was inflicted on the Intelligence Ministry buildings which houses the dreaded organization's various departments. Successive sounds of explosion were heard throughout the northern and eastern neighborhoods of the capital.
Long convoys of ambulances and fire engines rushed to the scene while the revolutionary Guards Corps and the State Security Force in the capital were put on full alert. The area of the attack was sealed off and revolutionary Guards patrols searched all vehicles and pedestrians.
The Mojahedin Command Headquarters in Iran said additional information would be released in due course.
The mortar attack on the Intelligence Ministry Headquarters comes on the eve of the clerical regime's ten-day celebrations commemorating the Iranian Revolution, with Monday marking the anniversary of Khomeini's return to Tehran. The mortar attack on the headquarters of the mullahs' Gestapo disrupted the mullahs' political razzmatazz prepared by the mullahs to celebrate the anniversary of their hijacking of the Iranian people's revolution against the Shah's dictatorship.
Ms. Zahra Rajabi, a member of the Mojahedin's leadership council, and Ali Moradi, a Mojahedin sympathizer, were assassinated on February 20, 1996, by agents of the regime's Intelligence Ministry in Istanbul, Turkey. She was on a humanitarian mission to aid Iranian refugees in Turkey.
Other crimes of the Intelligence Ministry in the past include:
- the April 1990 assassination in Switzerland of Professor Kazem Rajavi, brother of Iranian Resistance Leader Massoud Rajavi and representative of the National Council of Resistance in Switzerland;
- the March 1993 assassination of Mohammad Hossein Naghdi, NCR's representative in Italy;
- the May 1995 assassination in Iraq of Mojahedin members Effat Pourhaddad and Fereshteh Esfandiari, and the July 1995 assassination of Ibrahim Salimi, Yar Ali Gartabar, Hossien Sadidi, the June 1994 assassination of Ahmad Sadr Lahiji, and the November 1997 slaying of Nosrat Bahou and Yahya Mohammadpour;
- the 1992 kidnapping, mutilation and assassination of Mojahedin member Akbar Ghorbani in Turkey;
- the 1994 murder of three Christian leaders in Iran;
- the June 1994 bombing of the holy shrine of the eighth Shiite Imam;
- the setting up of terrorist networks throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia and the assassination of Iranian dissidents such as the murder of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents in Berlin, Germany (September 1992);
- the arrest and execution of political prisoners since 1984, particularly the massacre of political prisoners in September 1988;
- cruel and savage methods for torture of resistant political prisoners;
- setting up of safe houses for secret torture and murder of opponents;
- continuous harassment of families of the Mojahedin and other victims of the regime;
- controlling the offices, schools, universities and factories, and arresting the regime's opponents and suppressing acts of protest in these centers.
The clerical regime's Intelligence Ministry, headquartered in the same building that housed the Shah's secret police (SAVAK) is intensely hated by the people of Iran.
In the wake of the recent wave of murders of dissidents and writers in Iran, Khamenei and Khatami both heaped praise on members and officials in charge of the Intelligence Ministry, describing them as "the most loyal and honest forces of the Islamic Revolution," "competent managers," and "valuable assets of the nation."
Referring to the countless crimes of this repressive organ, Khamenei declared, "Was it not for the efforts of this ministry, the Islamic Revolution would not have survived."
People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran
January 31, 1999
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