TEHRAN -- An appeals court in Denmark has upheld guilty verdicts against three members of the so-called Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA) terrorist group convicted of promoting terror in Iran and espionage for the Saudi intelligence service.
The three were arrested in February 2020 in the town of Ringsted, located 60 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the Danish capital of Copenhagen and found guilty of terrorist operations, including the 2018 deadly terrorist attack in Iran’s southwestern city of Ahvaz that claimed the lives of 25 people.
The Eastern Court in Copenhagen said on Tuesday that the ASMLA members had been gathering information about individuals and organizations in Denmark and abroad, as well as on Iranian military affairs, and passing it on to Saudi intelligence.
Prosecutor Henrik Aagaard said the case underscored “how foreign powers carry out their activities on Danish soil.”
The unnamed men face up to 12 years in prison. Their sentences, based on the ruling by the Eastern High Court, are to be announced later this year.
The Eastern High Court also confirmed guilty verdicts issued by the District Court in Roskilde in February 2022 against the men, which convicted them of financing and attempting to finance terrorism by obtaining 15 million kroner ($2.2 million) and trying to obtain at least another 15 million kroner from Saudi Arabia for the separatist group.
The ASMLA has been pushing to separate the southwestern province of Khuzestan — home to the country’s Arab population — from the rest of Iran by engaging in an armed conflict against the Iranian government.
In September 2018, it claimed responsibility for an attack on a military parade in Ahvaz, Khuzestan’s provincial capital, which killed 25 people, including members of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and civilian bystanders, and injured 70 others.
ASMLA ringleader Farajollah Chaab, also known as Habib Asyud, was arrested in November 2020 on the back of a set of “specialized and combined measures” by Iranian intelligence forces. The Swedish-backed terrorist was executed on May 6, 2023.
Iran’s Judiciary confirmed the death sentence on March 12 that year “on charges of corruption on earth through the formation, management, and leadership of a rebel group called ASMLA and the design and execution of numerous terrorist operations in Khuzestan province.”
Chaab pleaded guilty and confessed in 2022 to masterminding the 2018 atrocity as well as many other acts of terror targeting the Iranian nation.