Group Beheads Hostage in Iran

Reuters:

A little-known Sunni Muslim group has beheaded an Iranian security agent it abducted last month in officially Shiite Iran and has issued a video tape of the killing, Al Arabiya television reported today. READ MORE

Al Arabiya said the Organisation of God's Soldiers for Sunni Mujahideen (Holy Fighters) in Iran had issued the tape, but the satellite channel would not air the footage of the killing.

It broadcast parts of the video showing a masked man pushing the blindfolded hostage, identified as Shahab Mansouri, to the ground and another approaching him with a knife.

The tape's authenticity could not be verified immediately.

On June 20, Al Arabiya aired a video from the group threatening to "send the hostage's head as a gift to the elected president" if Iranian authorities did not free its imprisoned members within three weeks.

Iranian officials were not immediately available to comment.

Al Arabiya said the Sunni Muslim group was headed by a man whose name was given as Abdul Malik Baluchi. The channel said he had appeared in the earlier tape questioning the hostage.

The leader's name and tribal robes worn by the kidnappers suggested they were from Iran's remote southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province, which has been the site of sporadic unrest by the country's ethnic Baluchi minority.

Kidnappings are rare in Iran, which says it is holding an unspecified number of al-Qaeda members whom it plans to try for crimes against the Islamic state.

About 90 per cent of Iran's nearly 70 million people are Shiite Muslims. Sunnis among the Kurdish, Turkmen and Baluchi ethnic minorities have often complained of discrimination.