Denmark charges three members of anti-iran terrorist group with financing terror
Denmark’s public prosecutor said on Thursday it had charged three members of anti-iran group for financing and supporting terrorist activity in Iran in collaboration with Saudi Arabian intelligence services.
The three members of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), a separatist armed group which carried out a deadly terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Ahvaz in 2018, were arrested in February last year in Ringsted, 60 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of Copenhagen and have been in custody since.
The three also were charged with illegal intelligence activity.
“This is a very serious case where persons in Denmark have carried out illegal intelligence activities and financed and promoted terrorism from Denmark in other countries,” public prosecutor Lise-lotte Nilas said in a statement, Reuters reported.
“Of course, this should not take place on Danish soil, and therefore I am satisfied that we can now bring charges in the case,” Nilas added according to AP.
The trial will start on April 29 and will be held in the Roskilde district court.
If found guilty, the men who were not named according to Danish rules, face up to 12 years in prison, Nilas said.
She said Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service started an investigation into the case involving the three men in November 2018.
The arrests of the three members of the London-based group were linked to a case in the Netherlands where police had arrested a 40-year-old man. Dutch police said that part of the ASMLA has an armed wing that carries out attacks in Iran, mainly against the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, as well as oil and gas fields. In September 2018, the ASMLA launched an attack on a military parade in Iran’s southern city of Ahvaz, leaving at least 25 people dead and 60 others wounded.
In November last year, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said ASMLA ringleader Farajollah Chaab, also known as Habib Asyud, had been detained after a series of “specialized and combined” intelligence operations, Press TV wrote.
It added at the time that Chaab had been the mastermind of the terrorist attack in Ahvaz, the capital city of the southwestern province of Khuzestan. According to the ministry, the ringleader had also planned several abortive terrorist operations in the capital Tehran as well as Khuzestan in recent years and had been planning a new assault when he was taken into custody.
The ministry further said at the time that ASMLA had the support of Saudi and Israeli regimes, and directed terrorist operations inside Iran despite international arrest warrants against its ringleaders.
The terror outfit is working for purported separation of Khuzestan, which is home to Iran’s Arab population.