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TEHRAN, June 8 (News Agencies) - Iran's intelligence ministry insisted Thursday that an Iranian who has implicated Tehran in the Lockerbie airliner bombing is a member of the armed opposition group the Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) or People's Mujahedeen. The US CBS television channel Monday quoted Behbahani, whose first name it gave as Ahmad, as saying he had documents to prove Iran was behind the Lockerbie bombing, which killed all 259 people on board the jumbo jet in 1988 and 11 others on the ground. In a statement Iran’s intelligence ministry said the man, whom it called Shahram Beladi Behbahani, had joined the Mujahadeen after fleeing to Iraq in 1991 while he was being sought for an armed robbery in Iran. He trained as a spy and was repatriated to Iran under cover of a prisoner exchange in April 1998, where he was immediately placed under surveillance on suspicion of cooperating with Iraq and the armed opposition. "In 1998, he was arrested and charged with collaboration with Iraq and the MKO," the official said. Behbahani confessed his links to the Mujahadeen and was jailed for 10 years, the ministry said. On Jan. 22 of this year, Behbahani was given a one-week furlough, backed by bail posted by relatives. He used his release to flee to Turkey, where MKO contacts instructed him to pass himself off as an Iranian defector. The Iraq-based People's Mujahedeen on Monday strongly denied that Behbahani was a member of the group, describing him instead as a deputy intelligence minister, who had been "involved in many terrorist operations abroad," including the Lockerbie bombing. On Wednesday the group said Behbahani was a relative of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and had headed his bodyguard detail. Turkish police chief Turan Genc, quoted by Anatolia news agency, on Thursday played down Behbahani's importance, while the United States, which blames Libyan agents for the bombing, has also expressed skepticism. According to CBS, Behbahani said Tehran had planned the destruction of the Pan Am jumbo jet with the aid of a hardline Palestinian group, to avenge the accidental downing of an Iranian airliner by the US navy. Two Libyans are currently on trial in the Netherlands but under Scottish law over the bombing. |
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