New Iranian plot to assassinate dissidents in Europe thwarted
Revolutionary Guard agents plotted to assassinate Iranian dissidents in Albania who are calling for regime change in Tehran, it was revealed on Thursday.
The plot was uncovered and thwarted in March, but kept secret until now while evidence was assembled, said Albanian police chief Ardi Veliu.
An active cell of the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations unit led by Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was uncovered by Albania’s security institutions thanks to inside informants, Veliu said. The main plotters fled and are now in Turkey and Austria, he said.
About 3,000 members of the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, which is linked to the Paris-based dissident umbrella organization the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), have settled in Albania since 2014 after they were attacked in Iraq. They live in a camp near Durres, the main port in Albania.
“It is time that the Iranian regime’s embassies in Europe, including the one in Albania, be shut down,” said Ali Safavi, an official with the NCRI’s foreign affairs committee.
“They are not diplomatic centers, they direct and facilitate the regime’s terrorist operations abroad.”
France said in October 2018 there was no doubt Iran’s intelligence ministry was behind a plot to attack the NCRI’s annual rally outside Paris in June of that year. Agents linked to Iran were detained while traveling in a vehicle with bomb-making equipment.
French authorities seized assets belonging to Tehran’s intelligence services and two Iranian nationals, and expelled an Iranian diplomat.