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KOI SANJAQ, Iraq, July 4 (AFP) - 15h10 -
Iranian president-elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad was
directly involved in plotting the 1989 assassination
of a Kurdish rebel leader in Vienna, an official of
the banned Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran
charged Monday.
"According to our information, the Iranian
government formed three committees for the
assassination" of then KDPI leader Abdul Rahman
Ghassemlou, party offical Hassan Ashrafi told AFP at
his base in neighbouring Iraq.
"The first one planned it, the second one which was
led by Ahmadinejad was tasked with facilitating it
and the third one executed it."
Ashrafi said aides of then president Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani had approached the KDPI seeking a secret
meeting with Ghassemlou which they had then abused
to murder him.
Among those present at the July 13 meeting on the
Iranian side were three members of the secret
service, he said, naming them as Haji Mustafawi,
Jaafar Sahraroudi and Mansur Bzurkian.
He said it was Mustafawi who pulled the trigger
killing Ghassemlou and Abdullah Qadiri, another KDPI
official. When these allegations have surfaced in
the past, the officials have not commented.
A third Kurd was also killed, according to Austrian
authorities, who said said Saturday they had
documents implicating the president-elect in the
murders.
"A dossier concerning Mr. Ahmadinejad was submitted
to the Federal Counter-Terrorism Agency, which
handed it over to the public prosecutor's office,"
interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said.
But the Iranian foreign ministry flatly denied
Ahmadinejad's involvement in the killings and warned
European countries not to be duped by "the Zionist
propaganda" campaign to smear the president-elect's
reputation.
"Our recommendation to the Europeans is this: don't
be tricked and fall into the trap of Zionist
propaganda," said ministry spokesman Hamid Reza
Asefi.
"They should separate their interests from those of
the American and the Zionist regimes."
The KDPI is Iran's main Kurdish rebel faction. The
Maoist Komaleh also operates in Kurdish-inhabited
areas along the Turkish and Iraqi border, although
both group's attacks on security forces have been
much reduced in recent years.
Ahmadinejad, who won a shock landslide in a June 24
election run-off, has also been accused of
involvement in the 1979 hostage-taking at the US
embassy in Tehran, which led to the severing of ties
between Iran and the United States the following
year.
AFP
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