Iran blamed for attempt on Kurdish dissident leader

Iran Focus:

A secret agent’s bid to assassinate an Iranian Kurdish dissident based in neighbouring Iraq was thwarted, according to a statement issued today by the group, the National Islamic Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan (KHABAT).

“On June 13, a terrorist attempt on the life of Kak-Baba Sheikh Hosseini, a member of KHABAT’s political bureau, was neutralised”, the statement read.

The group identified the agent as Loqman Ahmadi, an undercover agent for Iran’s secret police, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK). READ MORE

After being uncovered, Loqmani said he had been sent to join the group’s ranks while in communication with a three-man VEVAK cell in the Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya. His instructions were to assassinate Hosseini as he travelled from the organisation’s political bureau to their office in the Iraqi town of Irbil.

Ahmadi was to contact a VEVAK team leader in Suleimaniya by phone so that Iranian intelligence agents could assist in his fleeing the scene after the assassination, according to the statement issued on the Kurdish group’s website.

Ahmadi is presently in the custody of local security forces in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The group said that Tehran had organized the attack, because KHABAT was uncompromising in its stance against the clerical regime.

“Within the space of one month, the cleric regime’s VEVAK has dispatched three terrorist teams to Iraqi Kurdistan to assassinate Khebat officials, while at the same time pressuring families of KHABAT peshmargas inside Iran to help hand over their family members to the regime”, the group added.