Tehran, June 20: The shadowy Sunni rebel group Jundallah, whose leader Abdolmalek Rigi was hanged on Sunday, has been waging a deadly insurgency in southeastern Iran for nearly a decade.
Jundallah (Soldiers of God) insists it is fighting for the rights of the Sunni ethnic Baluchi population of southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province, in the face of Shiite rule from Tehran.
Sistan-Baluchestan province lies on a major narcotics smuggling route from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Europe, and the Iranian authorities are involved in a tough battle against trafficking in the province.
Rigi’s Jundallah is accused of carrying out lethal bombings against Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and abducting its frontier patrols and soldiers in cross-border operations reportedly carried out from Pakistan.
Iranian officials charge that the “terrorist” group has links with Al-Qaeda and that it has received money and training from arch-foe the United States in collaboration with Britain to destabilise the Islamic republic.
They also charge that the intelligence services of Pakistan, Britain and the United States had links with Rigi and his group, claims rejected by all three countries.
Rigi was hanged early Sunday in Tehran’s Evin prison, state news agency IRNA reported.
It quoted a court statement as saying: “The head of the armed counter-revolutionary group in the east of the country… was responsible for armed robbery, assassination attempts, armed attacks on the army and police and on ordinary people, and murder.”
The latest deadly attack claimed by the group was a suicide bombing last October killing at least 42 people including seven commanders of the Revolutionary Guards in the Sistan-Baluchestan town of Pisheen.
Jundallah also claimed a May 28 bombing against a Shiite mosque in the provincial capital Zahedan, in which more than 20 people were killed and 50 wounded.
That attack came in the run-up to Iran’s hotly disputed June 12 presidential election last year, which saw incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad secure a second term.
Jundallah is also accused of a 2007 attack which killed 13 Guards.
Analysts estimate that the group was formed somewhere between 2000-2003 and now has about 1,000 militants trained in small arms and explosives.
In recent years the Iranian authorities have resorted to increasingly tough measures against the group.
In July 2009, they hanged 13 of its members in a mass prison execution, terming them “enemies of God” after convicting them of a string of offences, including kidnapping foreigners.
The Jundallah leader’s brother, Abdolhamid Rigi, was also hanged in May after being captured and convicted by the authorities.
Abdolmalek Rigi’s arrest too was reportedly dramatic.
He was captured while on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgystan when Iranian warplanes forced the plane to land in Iran.
Soon after his arrest, Jundallah claimed it had appointed Muhammad Dhahir Baluch as its new leader, the US-based SITE monitoring agency reported.
According to SITE, Jundallah said in its website posting: “Let the (Iranian) regime know that it will face a movement that is stronger and much more solid than ever before and one whose existence it has not been aware of.”
A few days after Rigi’s arrest Iranian state media alleged that the United States had offered to provide the militant aid to battle the Islamic regime.
“They (Americans) said they would cooperate with us and will give me military equipment,” Rigi said in a recorded statement broadcast on Iran’s English-language Press TV.
—Agencies