Representational picture. Twitter
Iranian authorities have arrested 28 individuals linked to the Islamic State group for plotting to focus on Tehran through the anniversary of final yr’s protests, the intelligence ministry mentioned on Sunday.
The protests erupted after the dying in custody on September 16, 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested for allegedly flouting the Islamic Republic’s strict costume code for ladies.
“In recent days, during a series of simultaneous operations in Tehran, Alborz and West Azerbaijan provinces, several terrorist bases and team houses were attacked, and 28 members of the said terrorist network were arrested,” the ministry mentioned on its web site.
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“These elements are affiliated to the professional crime group of Daesh (Islamic State group) and some of them have a history of accompanying takfiris in Syria or being active in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Kurdistan region of Iraq,” it added.
In Shiite-dominated Iran, the time period “takfiri” usually refers to jihadists or proponents of radical Sunni Islam.
The intelligence ministry mentioned two safety personnel had been wounded through the arrest operations, and plenty of bombs, firearms, suicide vests and communications gadgets had been seized.
It mentioned it had neutralised a plot to “carry out 30 simultaneous terrorist explosions in densely populated centres of Tehran to undermine security and incite riots and protests on the anniversary of last year’s riots”.
The months-long demonstrations noticed a whole bunch of individuals killed, together with dozens of safety personnel, in what Tehran referred to as “riots” fomented by international governments and “hostile media”.
On Thursday, a court docket sentenced to dying a Tajik IS member convicted over a lethal gun assault on a Shiite Muslim shrine in August.
The assault on the Shah Cheragh mausoleum in Shiraz, the capital of Fars province within the south, got here lower than a yr after a mass capturing on the identical website that was later claimed by the IS group.