Shielding Terrorists?

The British charge d’affaires, along with the Dutch and Danish ambassadors, were “informed of Iran’s strong protests over their respective countries’ hosting of some members of the terrorist group” which carried out the attack, after Saturday’s deadly shooting of 29 people at a military parade. Gunmen sprayed a crowd with bullets in the south-western city of Ahvaz, at a military parade in the in oil-rich Khuzestan province.  Civilians, including children, were among the victims.

An Arab nationalist separatist group, called the Patriotic Arab Democratic Movement in Ahwaz, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iran called on Denmark and the Netherlands to extradite the attack’s “perpetrators and their accomplices” to stand trial, Irna said, citing foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi. “It is not acceptable that the European Union does not blacklist members of these terrorist groups as long as they do not perpetrate a crime on ... European soil,” Qasemi was quoted as saying.

The British charge d’affaires was told it was unacceptable “that the spokesman for the Al-Ahvazi terrorist group was allowed to claim responsibility of the attack through a London-based TV network”, according to the news agency.

 Tehran claims the group is backed by Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused US-backed Gulf Arab states of carrying out the attack.

“This crime is a continuation of the plots of the regional states that are puppets of the United States, and their goal is to create insecurity in our dear country,” Khamenei said in a statement published on his website. He did not name the regional states he believed were to blame.

The Al-Ahwaz Arab Peoples Democratic Popular Front (AADPF) is based in London.

The Democratic Solidarity Party of Al-Ahwaz (DSPA), based in the US and the UK, claiming to represent the Iranian Arabs of Khuzestan

Ahwaz Arab Renaissance Party (AARP) is another separatist group advocating armed resistance to the Iranian government. Its leadership is in Canada. 

The Ahwaz Liberation Organisation (ALO), based in Maastricht in the Netherlands, was formed out of the remnants of three Iraqi-backed groups – the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan (DRFLA), People's Front for Liberation of Arabistan (PFLA) and the Arab Front for the Liberation of Al-Ahwaz (AFLA).