BAGHDAD, 3 July 2007 — The US military yesterday accused Iranian special forces of using Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militiamen for training Iraqi extremists and of planning an attack that killed five US soldiers this year.
Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner told reporters that US-led forces had captured a senior Hezbollah militant, Ali Musa Daqduq, who confessed to training Iraqi extremists in Iran to carry out attacks in Iraq.
Daqduq, a Lebanese, was captured in Iraq’s southern city of Basra on March 20, Bergner said, adding he “initially claimed to be deaf and mute.”
“In 2005, he was directed by senior Lebanese Hezbollah leadership to go to Iran and work with the Qods Force to train Iraqi extremists,” Bergner said.
He said the Qods Force, a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Hezbollah were jointly operating camps near Tehran in which they trained Iraqi fighters before sending them back to Iraq to wage attacks.
“He (Daqduq) was directed by the Iranian Qods Force to move Iraqis in and out of Iraq and report on the training and operations of Iraqi special groups.”
Bergner said the Qods Force’s goal was to develop extremist groups into a network similar to Hezbollah, adding that the two were training between 20 and 60 Iraqis at a time.
“Iranian Qods Force is using Hezbollah as a proxy ... as a surrogate in Iraq, a surrogate to work on their behalf and do things they do not want to do themselves. Hezbollah brought a level of sophistication and street capability” to the training, he added.
Iran denies involvement in violence in Iraq and blames the US-led invasion in 2003 for the bloodshed. Iran does not officially acknowledge the existence of the Qods Force.
A Hezbollah spokesman in Beirut said he was aware of Bergner’s accusations, but had no immediate comment.
Iran’s Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar dismissed on Sunday as a “sheer lie” US accusations that Iran was militarily intervening in Iraq and supported Iraqi militants, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The fresh charges against Iran come at a sensitive time. On Sunday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told Reuters he was pressing the United States and Iran to hold a second round of talks in Baghdad to follow up a landmark meeting on May 28, but that no date has been set.
In fresh violence, the US military said four US soldiers and one Marine were killed in various attacks in Iraq on Sunday, marking a bloody start to the month for American forces.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s highest criminal court has sentenced four alleged terrorists to death, including two foreign fighters from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the US military said yesterday.
“The Central Criminal Court of Iraq convicted 46 individuals from June 10 to June 21 for violations of the Iraqi Terrorist Law,” it said in a statement. Four were condemned to death and three sentenced to life in prison.
