TEHRAN, 6 September 2004 — Iran will soon prosecute alleged members of the terrorist network Al-Qaeda in revolutionary courts, the news network Khabar reported yesterday. The Iranian judiciary announced that while some of the arrested Al-Qaeda members had been repatriated, the rest would be prosecuted in revolutionary courts, which handle national security cases.
The report gave no further details on the number and identity of those to be prosecuted and when the trials will be held.
Since the conflict in Afghanistan and fall of the Taleban regime in 2001, Iran has reportedly arrested more than 500 alleged Al-Qaeda members who tried to enter Iran illegally. It is unclear how many of them have already been handed over to their home countries during the last three years.
Iran has several times denied handing the alleged Al-Qaeda members to the United States or swapping them for rebels of the militant opposition “People’s Mujahedin” (MKO) reportedly still in Iraq. Khabar also reported that alleged “nuclear spies” arrested last month while trying to smuggle information about Iran’s nuclear activities abroad will soon face trial.
Iran yesterday also condemned the UN Security Council’s resolution condemning outside interference in Lebanese politics, saying it saw an Israeli hand in the text. “Whenever Israel is faced with internal tensions, it transfers the tensions outside its borders and threatens different countries such as Syria,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
