VIENNA, July 5 (Reuters) - Austrian
prosecutors have launched an investigation into
whether Iran's president-elect was involved in the
1989 assassination of a Kurdish leader in Vienna,
the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
A ministry spokesman confirmed that prosecutors had
started a probe by asking the ministry's
anti-terrorism task force to investigate the case,
but declined to provide any details.
"The prosecutor's office has made the request,"
ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said. |
Ex.
Kurdish Leader Dr.Abdul-Rahman Qasimlo 1989 ┼
Photo: Kurd Net Archive |
|
Austrian Green Party security spokesman Peter Pilz
told a news conference there was "credible evidence"
that Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was
involved in the 1989 assassination of Iranian exile
Kurdish opposition leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou
and two other Kurdish politicians in Vienna.
"Yesterday the state prosecutor's office asked the
Anti-Terrorism Task Force to begin an investigation
into the allegations about the 1989 triple murder,"
Pilz told reporters.
In addition to Ahmadinejad, Pilz said former Iranian
president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was at the centre
of the newly reopened investigation.
Pilz said it was up to the prosecutor's office to
decide whether to request that Rafsanjani and
Ahmadinejad be questioned.
Iranian officials were not immediately available for
comment. On Saturday a senior aide to Ahmadinejad in
Tehran said Pilz's charges were "not even worth
commenting on. It is like the other accusations and
there will be more accusations."
ANTI-TERRORISM FORCE
Pilz said his accusation was based on information he
received from an Iranian journalist living in France
who Pilz calls only "Witness D". Pilz gave this
information to the Interior Ministry and the
Anti-Terrorism Task Force, which then forwarded it
to the state prosecutor's office for evaluation.
"I cannot personally say whether the allegations of
Witness D are true, but I can say that they are
credible," Pilz said.
Witness D's information came from one of the alleged
gunmen, who contacted Witness D in 2001 but later
drowned, Pilz said.
One of the reasons that Witness D appeared credible
is that he knows details that only someone with
access to Austrian investigators' classified files
could know, he said.
Pilz said Witness D had no ties to any exiled
Iranian political groups in France.
Many members of the National Council of Resistance
of Iran (NCRI) and its militant wing, the People's
Mujahideen Organisation, are based in Paris. Both
oppose Iran's Islamic government and are listed by
the U.S. State Department as terrorist organisations.
Several former hostages who were held by Iranian
militants after the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy
have accused Ahmadinejad of taking part in the
444-day hostage drama which led Washington to break
ties with Tehran.
The president-elect's office and several
hostage-takers have denied Ahmadinejad helped storm
the embassy. Pilz said that Witness D had no
information to support the allegations that
Ahmadinejad was involved in the U.S. hostage-taking.
Reuters
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