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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Iran Terrorist FM to visit Turkey on Friday | |
| 2006-08-11 | |
| Tehran, Iran, Aug. 10 – Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will travel to Istanbul on Friday to hold talks with Turkish officials on the crisis in Lebanon, the official news agency IRNA reported on Thursday. Mottaki will also discuss the events in Palestine, the report said. Friday’s trip will be Mottaki’s second visit to Turkey since he became Foreign Minister. Mottaki has a chequered history in Turkey and was once expelled for his involvement in terrorism when he was the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to Ankara. Mottaki, 53, has been accused of involvement in a series of terrorist attacks in Turkey in the late 1980s, according to Iranian exiles and defectors from the theocratic regime. Turkish authorities had asked him to leave the country in 1989, when he was Iran’s ambassador in Ankara, after his role in several terrorist incidents in Turkey became known. Mottaki was appointed Iran’s ambassador to Turkey in 1985 and it was during his tenure in Ankara that the Revolutionary Guard-turned-diplomat became involved in a number of terror attacks and assassinations of dissidents, according to Iranian opposition figures and defectors. In the 1980s and the early 1990s, at least 50 Iranian dissidents were kidnapped or assassinated in Turkey by Iranian secret agents often working closely with diplomats from Iran’s embassy and consulates. On Mottaki’s watch, the Iranian embassy in Ankara and the consulate-general in Istanbul were turned into safe houses for agents of Iran’s notorious secret police hunting down Iranian dissidents, according to exiles.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 "...according to Iranian exiles and defectors." How about a name...no? Maybe an affilliation...not that either huh? Oh that's right this 'Iranfocus'...guess we'll just go with exiles and defectors then. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2006-08-11 13:24 |