Iran nabs ten bombing suspects

Sunday Times
Jan. 28, 2006

TEHRAN - Iran has made number of arrests after Tuesday's twin bomb attack in the restive oil city of Ahvaz with 10 suspects already lined up for charges, the local media reported.

"A number of the people involved in the bombing were identified and arrested and so far 10 of those have been handed over to the judiciary," Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi was quoted as saying by Iranian news agencies.

Eight people were killed and 46 wounded in the blasts, and the regime has pointed the finger at Britain, which has a large contingent of troops just across the border from Ahvaz in southern Iraq.

Western conspiracy

"Intelligence agents from the US, Britain and Israel are trying to make Iran insecure in a co-ordinated plan, and the incident in Ahvaz stems from that," the minister said.

The minister also blamed Iran's foreign "enemies" for two recent military plane crashes - even though other officials and investigators have attributed the accidents to technical problems.

"My appraisal is that even the crash of C-130 and Falcon was planned by the enemy and was done electronically," he claimed, but did not elaborate.

On January, several top brass in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were among 11 people killed in a military plane crash in the northwest of the country.

The crash was blamed on landing gear failure.

That crash came barely a month after a decrepit C-130 transport plane - bought from the US before the 1979 revolution and starved of spares - crashed after take-off from Tehran and killed 108 people. Engine failure was cited as the cause.

Britain denies allegations

Britain has dismissed as "completely without foundation" the allegations concerning the Ahvaz bombings.

Tehran and London have seen their relations steadily deteriorate in recent years, notably over Iran's nuclear programme and alleged Iranian meddling in Iraq.

However, despite the extremely serious allegations from Iran, no diplomatic action against Britain yet appears to have been taken.

Ahvaz has been hit by a wave of insecurity over the past year, including ethnic riots in April, a string of bombings in June and October and several pipeline blasts.

Ethnic Arabs are said to represent three percent of Iran's population of 69 million, who are mainly Farsi speaking, but are believed to make up close to 50 percent of oil-rich Khuzestan's population.