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Iran Executes Sunni Rebel Leader

21 June 2010 23:59 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Iran hanged a Sunni rebel leader, Abdul-Malik Rigi, on Sunday morning after a revolutionary court found him guilty of 79 criminal charges, the ISNA news agency reported, APA reports quoting â€œThe New York Timesâ€.
Mr. Rigi was identified as the founder and leader of the Jundallah group in southeastern Iran, near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. The group, whose name means soldiers of God in Arabic, was responsible for a series of bombings and attacks since 2003 in which 154 members of the government security forces were killed and 320 others were wounded, the report said.
He was hanged in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran in the presence of families of some victims.
Mr. Rigi was charged with armed robbery, having ties with Israeli, American and NATO intelligence agents, involvement in the killing of dozens of security force officers, kidnapping and founding Jundallah, which the authorities characterized as a terrorist group.
The group had claimed responsibility for attacks against government forces in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, the home of members of the Sunni Baluchi ethnic group, who are a minority in Shiite-dominated Iran.
Most drug traffickers from Afghanistan and Pakistan pass through the province, and Iranian authorities had said that Mr. Riggi was involved in smuggling drugs.
Authorities in Iran said in February that Mr. Rigi was arrested by Iranian security forces as he was flying over the Persian Gulf en route from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan. Video broadcast by Iranian state television showed masked men taking him from a small plane. His younger brother, Abdul-Hamid Rigi, was captured in Pakistan in 2008 and executed in Iran last month.