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30th April, 97
LONDON, April 29 (AFP) - Supporters of author Salman Rushdie, sentenced to death by an Iranian fatwa or religious decree, reacted "with alarm" Tuesday to the decision to return European Union ambassadors to Iran.
The International Rushdie Defence Committee (IRDC) accused the European Union of taking the "weakest" possbile measures against Iran.
On Tuesday EU ministers made it clear that they were not willing to follow the United States in severing all diplomatic ties with Tehran, indicating that their ambassadors would shortly return to the Iranian capital.
The ambassadors were withdrawn on April 10 after a German court ruled that senior Iranian officials were involved in the 1992 murder of four Iranian Kurds in a Berlin restaurant.
The IRDC stressed that on Saturday 3,000 days will have passed since the Iranian fatwa was imposed, threatening the lives of Rushdie and those associated with his novel "The Satanic Verses," which some Moslems believe is blasphemous.
"The EU decision is shocking, particularly when we know they are fully aware of Iran's involvement in many other acts of terrorism in Europe," said committee secretary Carmel Bedford.

25th April, 97
CANBERRA, April 23 (UPI) _ The United States is asking Australia to withdraw its $1 billion credit line to Iran to back its hardline stance against that country for its direct involvement in international terrorism.
Australia has been under pressure to act against Iran following a European court's finding that Iran had been directly involved in terrorism there.
But analysts said the action requested would have a major impact on Australian agriculture as Iran is a huge buyer of Australian primary products, especially wheats.
Australia has said it will not make a decision until after it completes consultations with other Western nations to establish a co- ordinated approach to the issue.

24th April, 97
PARIS, April 24 (AFP) - Tehran authorities have banned Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami from presenting his latest film, "The Delicious Taste of Cherries," at the Cannes festival next month, he said late Wednesday.
Speaking on Radio France Internationale, Kiarostami said the decision was notified to him Wednesday by a deputy culture minister responsible for cinema.
The official told him that the movie should have been shown first at the annual Tehran festival which is held in February to mark the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Cannes festival head Gilles Jacob said Tuesday he had received no information on Kiarostami's film, but added: "We are still keeping a place for him."
Kiarostami's previous movie was shown at Cannes last year.

17th April, 97
Iranian Trade Delegation Turned Down - Germany has cancelled a pre-planned trip by an Iranian trade delegation until further notice. The decision was taken after the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran was accused of assassinating political opponents in the Mykonos restaurant.

14th April, 97
BONN, April 12 (AFP) - Germany's intelligence services have launched one of the country's biggest anti-terrorist operations in the wake of a court decision implicating Iran in a Berlin assassination, the Der Spiegel news magazine said in a report to be published Monday.

The unconfirmed story said Germany's security chiefs had begun a "dangerous elements programme" of surveillance of presumed terrorists on German soil which rivals that of a similar operation executed during the 1991 Gulf War.

People suspected of terrorist acts, especially 600 members of a Shi'ite Hezbollah group settled in Germany, are being watched and having their movements restricted, the magazine said.

A government spokesman contacted by AFP said Bonn "could neither confirm nor deny" the article, adding its policy was to not comment on facts relating to questions of security.

A rival of Der Spiegel, the magazine Focus, cited an internal police document which said "it is necessary to be ready for operations by Iran against dissidents and opponents to the regime."

Focus said an Iranian suspected of preparing an terrorist attack had been arrested in the south-west Nuremberg region. Federal police had also searched several homes in the region.

German security agencies had been monitoring all telephone calls between Iran and Germany for several weeks, the magazine added.

On Thursday, a Berlin court jailed an Iranian and a Lebanese for life for the 1992 gunning down of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents. For the first time in a western court, the judgement directly implicated Iran's Islamic regime in the crime.

The Bonn government reacted by recalling its ambassador to Iran, a move followed by all other EU partners except Greece.

Iran withdrew its German ambassador and Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani criticised the court decision, warning that Germany would "suffer."

Friday, during protests outside the German embassy in Tehran, the leader of a hardline Islamic group told the crowd that one of his followers would "strap a bomb to himself and blow up the embassy" if Germany did not back down in its criticism of Iranian leaders.

Der Spiegel said Germany's federal court was examining ways to legally pursue other Iranians, including the secret agent suspected of masterminding the Berlin killing. It was also said to be looking at the case against Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Akbar Velayati.

Neither Germany's federal police nor federal court were available Saturday to comment on the information.

Former Official Disclosed Iran's Complicity in Murders

By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 12 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post

BERLIN, April 11 -- The key testimony that led a German court to blame Iran's top leadership for the assassination of three Kurdish dissidents and another man in a Berlin restaurant came from a source initially identified only as "Witness C."

The man concealed behind that bland pseudonym was Abolhassem Mesbahi, a 39-year-old former Iranian official who had recently defected from Tehran. He was brought to the prosecution's attention by Iranian ex-president Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr.

Until Mesbahi was interrogated, even prosecutor Bruno Jost did not realize what a trove of evidence he would unveil for the case. Mesbahi 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 may prove to be the most valuable and well-informed defector from Iran in the past decade or more," said a Western diplomat who has monitored the case closely. "Nobody else has provided that kind of insight into how the top levels of Iran's leadership really function."

Mesbahi's testimony last October was nothing short of explosive. 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. In February, Mesbahi agreed that the court could identify him by name.

Mesbahi also supplied eyewitness accounts of discussions that heralded the attack on three leading Iranian Kurdish opposition figures gunned down at Berlin's Mykonos restaurant in September 1992. His testimony was checked by Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND.

The BND is reputed to have the best information on Iran among Western intelligence agencies. Germany has long maintained a tolerant, even friendly attitude toward Iran's Islamic Republic, along with strong trade and investment connections. More than 100,000 Iranians live in Germany -- far more than anywhere else in Europe. They include family members of influential figures in Iran's fundamentalist hierarchy, who provide a wealth of important contacts.

To the delight of the prosecution, Mesbahi's story was verified every step of the way. A photograph of Rafsanjani signing a security treaty with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze showed Mesbahi standing prominently behind them. He also offered details about secret negotiations with German politicians that showed he played a prominent role in securing the release of Rudolf Cordes, a German business executive taken hostage in Lebanon in 1987.

Even more important, perhaps, was the emotional reaction in Tehran that greeted the news that Mesbahi had defected and turned state's evidence in the Mykonos trial. Shortly after his appearance in the Berlin courtroom, demonstrators in Tehran began marching on the Germany Embassy, throwing eggs and tomatoes and chanting, "Death to Zionist Germany."

Tehran's government-controlled press described Mesbahi as a washed-up intelligence agent who had been rejected for a job at the foreign ministry when he returned home and was forced to become a tradesman. The Tehran Times newspaper claimed that he was embroiled in several financial scams and had run up $30 million in fraudulent debts. When an arrest warrant was issued against him in 1995, it said, he fled to Europe via Pakistan.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's deputy foreign minister, today lambasted the German court for reaching a verdict that "solely relied on remarks of terrorists and hijackers, whose arrest warrants have been issued by the Iranian judiciary. These elements are members of counterrevolutionary groups whose aim is to mar the prestige of Iran."

But the three-judge tribunal that heard Mesbahi's testimony -- some of it presented in secrecy -- found it persuasive enough to implicate Iran's leadership judicially for the first time in assassinations abroad. During several hours of reading the court opinion, presiding judge Frithjof Kubsch referred repeatedly to details furnished by Mesbahi which, the judge concluded, left no doubt that the highest levels of Iran's leadership ordered the killings of the Kurdish dissidents.

An Iranian grocer and a Lebanese accomplice were sentenced to life in prison, and two other Lebanese men received jail terms of five to 11 years. Many of the supporting documents in the court's verdict were not released to the public. German officials said that there was much sensitive intelligence material requiring an embargo.

Sources close to Chancellor Helmut Kohl said the United States did not convey any useful intelligence data, despite Washington's eagerness to see the trial provide conclusive evidence that Iran's leaders engage in terrorism.

Heinrich Rosenlehner, the BND's intelligence liaison in Washington when the trial opened in 1993, was summoned to Berlin to testify for five hours on what the United States knew about the case, according to senior German sources, who say the crucial evidence in the trial was supplied by Mesbahi and confirmed by German intelligence.

The German government recently demanded the expulsion of a U.S. intelligence agent who reportedly was seeking information about German contacts with Iran. It was believed to be the first time in the postwar era that Germany has sought to kick out a CIA agent, an undertaking that German officials said should serve as a warning about the need for a more equal partnership.

"Iran is one place where we clearly have better information than the Americans," a senior German official said.

German newspapers have reported that the BND has recruited several high-ranking sources within Iran's governing hierarchy. Since Mesbahi's defection, there have been reports that a major purge is taking place to find other leaks in Tehran's leadership circle.

Iran Linked To Bombing Suspect
By David B. Ottaway and Brian Duffy Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, April 13, 1997; A01 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 Sharifi, 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 bombing that killed 19 American servicemen and wounded more than 500 others, according to Canadian court records.

Sayegh, 28, has been identified by Canadian authorities as "a direct participant" in the truck bomb explosion at the Khobar Towers complex. Canadian court documents identify Sayegh as a member of Saudi Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group of militant Shiite Muslims.

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.

But several other U.S. officials, noting the difficulty in assessing the fragmentary evidence available, said they have yet to be firmly persuaded of Tehran's role. The FBI, which has had no direct access to Sayegh in Canada or to other Shiite suspects in Saudi Arabia, declined to comment on the information concerning Sharifi.

"God knows, there is still a lot to do, a lot to look into," one government official said.

If Iran, which has denied all complicity, is proven to have been involved in the attack, the Clinton administration could come under pressure to retaliate militarily or economically. The United States regards Iran as the world's foremost sponsor of international terrorism, through its agents and through the underground action wing of Hezbollah, based in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon. The Lebanese Shiite political and social movement, which Iranian agents helped found in the early 1980s, has spawned Iranian-fostered replicas in other Arab countries with their own underground operatives such as those in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Last week, a German court said the "highest state levels" of the Iranian government had ordered the 1992 execution in Berlin of three Iranian Kurdish dissidents and their translator. The ruling caused most Western European nations to recall ambassadors from Tehran.

The evidence of Iranian links to the Saudi Shiites suspected in the Khobar bombing includes bank checks signed by Sharifi, according to Arab sources. It is unclear whether the checks were given to Sayegh or other suspects in the attack.

Canadian and Saudi intelligence agencies have collected much of their information about Sayegh's alleged role in the bombing, as well as his links to Iranian authorities, from intercepts of telephone calls to his wife and family in Saudi Arabia from Canada before he was arrested, according to these sources.

Unaware his phone was tapped over a seven-month period, Sayegh disclosed details of his role in the bombing and mentioned others with whom he had collaborated, the sources added.

U.S. government officials said opinions are divided among authorities in Washington and Riyadh on the value of the telephone intercepts. While the evidence appears to show a conclusive link to Sherifi, one official said, "it does not rise to the level [necessary] for a criminal prosecution." One official said there is no hard evidence, for example, of Sherifi's operational role in the attack.

Canadian court documents contend Sayegh drove a surveillance car behind the explosives-filled tanker used to demolish the Khobar barracks. Sayegh has denied any involvement, contending he was in Syria at the time of the bombing. He faces a deportation hearing April 28, although it remains uncertain where he would be sent.

Saudi authorities told the Clinton administration in November that they believed the bombing was the work of Saudi Hezbollah members, with Iranian complicity. U.S. officials had been skeptical of the Saudi claim, in part because they believe the royal family has a vested interest in highlighting foreign influence rather than indigenous dissent.

Saudi officials note, however, that they face a dilemma because if their American allies become persuaded Tehran murdered U.S. servicemen, any U.S. retaliation could lead to additional Iranian attacks against the desert kingdom.

Moreover, the Saudi government has mixed views on how to deal with Tehran. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah is currently spearheading a diplomatic opening to Iran. He recently met Iranian President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, who is scheduled to go to Saudi Arabia this week on a religious pilgrimage.

Sharifi 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. The attacks, which began in December 1994, killed more than 20 people.

Shiites living in the island emirate of Bahrain and those in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, where Khobar is located, are closely linked by family ties and travel frequently across a 16-mile causeway that binds the two countries. Sayegh has told Canadian authorities he traveled many times to Bahrain to visit relatives, according to court documents.

Last June, six of the convicted 15 Bahraini conspirators read confessions in which they described being recruited by Sharifi in 1993, while studying at a religious school in the Iranian holy city of Qom. Sayegh told reporters in Canada last month that he studied at Qom.

Arab sources said they believe that it was during Sayegh's stay in Qom that he was first contacted by Sharifi. U.S. officials said they think Sharifi also may have met with Sayegh in Damascus about two years before the bombing.

One of the two leaders of the Bahraini dissidents, Ali Ahmed Kadhem Mutaqawwi, said in his confession that Sharifi, 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 said they had been trained first at Karg Camp just north of Tehran and then, after June 1995, sent to Hezbollah camps in Lebanon's Syrian-controlled eastern Bekaa Valley. Mutaqawwi eventually headed the military wing's financial committee and chief liaison to Iranian intelligence -- whose main representative in dealing with the Bahrainis was Sharifi, according to Mutaqawwi's confession.

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

U.S. intelligence officials were at first skeptical of the alleged Iranian involvement in the Bahraini incidents. But last August, then-Assistant Secretary of State Robert H. Pelletreau issued a statement saying there was "credible evidence that a small group of Bahraini militants with a stated aim of overthrowing the [Bahraini] government had received assistance and training from Iran."

The testimony of Mutaqawwi is of particular interest to Saudi authorities because he disclosed in his confession that he had lived for months in the Saudi Eastern Province city of Damman, a few miles from Khobar, site of the U.S. military compound.

Sources said yesterday a team of FBI investigators is in Canada and hope to interview Hani Abdul Rahim Sayegh, 28, who is being held under maximum security in the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre.