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Iran
Focus
 Tehran, Iran, Mar. 02 – Two men accused of carrying
out a recent bombing in the south-western city of Ahwaz were
hanged in public on Thursday morning, a government-owned news agency
reported.
The two, Ali Afrawi and Mehdi
Navasseri, appeared on state television the night
before and “confessed” to having carried out the attack. Televised
recanting by political dissidents is regularly aired on Iran’s
state-run media and has drawn international condemnation in the past.
One of the two men said that he had been in contact with groups in Britain and Canada who were seeking to destabilise the oil-rich Khuzistan
province. Ahwaz
is the provincial centre of Khuzistan.
Iran’s Minister of
Intelligence and Security, or secret police chief, announced on Wednesday
that more than ten people had been arrested in connection with the recent
spate of bombings in Ahwaz.
He repeated the charge that the attackers were guided from abroad.
A string of top Iranian officials, including hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have
accused Britain
of being behind the bombings.
London has
repeatedly denied any involvement in the attacks. Dissidents believe the
bombings are the work of Iranian intelligence in a bid to smear opposition
groups. Iran’s
intelligence services have in the past acknowledged that they have carried
out bombings and assassinations to tarnish the image of their opponents and
brand them as terrorists.
Ethnic Arabs despise what they describe as the central government’s
discriminatory and repressive policy against them in the oil-rich Khuzistan
Province. Many
Iranian officials and politicians have accused the United States, Britain, and exile opposition
groups of stirring up unrest in the province.
The following are pictures of the execution of the two men:
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