Terrorist Leader Details Saudi Plot to Partition Iran
TEHRAN -- The ringleader of a separatist group behind a 2018 deadly terrorist attack in Ahvaz appeared at court here Sunday for the fifth time since his arrest, detailing a plot by the Saudi intelligence service to partition Iran.
Habib Farajollah Chaab, also known as Habib Asyud, stood trial at Branch 26 of Tehran’s Islamic Revolution Court.
Amin Vaziri, the prosecutor’s representative, said Chaab had admitted that the Saudi intelligence service tried to mobilize all terrorist and separatist grouplets to counter Iran after popular uprisings hit Arab nations one after another.
The Saudi intelligence service, he said, has launched several satellite channels with the aim of facilitating the partitioning of Iran.
Chaab said the Saudi-sponsored satellite channels aired videos and other visual material on a round-the-clock basis in order to stir violence in Iran.
The terrorist ringleader also confessed that Saudi Arabia had funded terrorist groups with the ultimate goal of spreading takfiri ideology in Iran, Vaziri said.
The prosecutor’s representative said the defendant had formed a terrorist group to carry out acts of terror in Iran and cooperated with anti-Iran terror groups, including PJAK and Jaish ul-Adl.
Chaab was the leader of the so-called Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz terrorist group (SMLA), who was arrested in November 2020 following “specialized and combined measures” by Iranian intelligence forces.
ASMLA is engaged in an armed sedition seeking a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s oil-producing southwestern province of Khuzestan.
In September 2018, it claimed responsibility for an attack on a military parade in the provincial capital of Ahvaz, which martyred 25 people, including members of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and civilian bystanders, and injured 70 others.