(AP/USA Today) William J. Kole - Austrian authorities have classified documents suggesting that Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have played a key role in the 1989 execution-style slayings of an Iranian Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna, the Austrian daily Der Standard reported Saturday. In Austria, Green Party leader Peter Pilz told the newspaper he wants a warrant issued for the arrest of Ahmadinejad, who he alleged "stands under strong suspicion of having been involved." Pilz accused Ahmadinejad of planning the murders of Kurdish resistance leader Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou and two of his colleagues, all of whom were shot in the head at a Vienna apartment by Iranian commandos on July 13, 1989. He said Ahmadinejad, then a high-ranking member of Iran's elite revolutionary guard, traveled to the Austrian capital a few days before the slayings to deliver the murder weapons to the commandos who carried out the attack.
2005-07-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive