Iran Arrests Five Al-Qaida Members
Iran has reportedly arrested five members of an al-Qaida linked terrorist cell.
The Iranian FARS news agency reported on Tuesday that the five members linked to the al-Qaida terrorist cell were arrested in the Southeastern province of Kerman.
The news agency reported that the terror cell crackdown operation also enabled the collection of weapons, ammunitions, and documents linked to the terrorist group.
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The Kerman province police chief, General Hossein Chenarian, told reporters that the terrorists planned to carry out sabotage attacks on Iranian soil and said, “These arrested foreign nationals are al-Qaida affiliates and are nationals of Iran’s western neighbors.”
The United States has traditionally accused Iran of acting with complicity towards the terrorist network, arguing that the country served as a safe-haven to extremists planning on mounting attacks throughout the world.
Back in July, U.S. officials accused Iran of entering into a secret deal with al-Qaida members. The deal reportedly would allow al-Qaida to funnel funds and operatives through Iranian territory.
Following the accusations, David S. Cohen, U.S. Treasury Department Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a July statement, “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world today.” He added, “We are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism.”
In another crackdown on civil instability, Iran has arrested a number of people for engaging in water fights in a Tehran public park over the weekend. This weekend was not the first police crackdown on water fights, as the first arrests were made in July when hundreds of men and women were taken into custody for spraying each other with water guns and water bottles at Tehran's Water and Fire park.
The people associated with the water fights are not linked to al-Qaida, but a top judiciary official warned that “counter-revolutionaries” were behind the water gun fights. Iranian spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni discussed the arrests with the Iranian news web site Tabnak saying, “This is not simply a game with water. This act is being guided from abroad.”
