Germany confirms arrest of Iranian espionage suspect
July 27, 1999, Berlin (dpa) - Police in Berlin have arrested an Iranian
national suspected of espionage, the federal prosecutor's office confirmed
Tuesday.
The man aged 36 is believed to have tried to spy on Iranian opposition
figures in Germany, said spokeswoman Eva Schuebel confirming reports by
the news magazine Der Spiegel and by the Iranian opposition. The suspect
was detained on July 14.
Schuebel rejected allegations from the opposition Iranian National Council
of Resistance that the suspect had planned to carry out acts of terrorism.
A statement by the opposition group identified the detained Iranian
as Hamid Khorsand, saying he was ``an intelligence ministry agent spying
for the mullahs' regime'' who tried to ``infiltrate the ranks of supporters
of the Mujahedin''.
The statement said Khorsand was involved, along with Kazem Darabi, in
a 1982 fight between Iranian regime supporters and opponents in Mainz,
Germany.
Darabi was one of the defendants found guilty in the 1992 murder of
Iranian dissidents in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin and is serving
his sentence in prison.
Schuebel said the arrest of Khorsand was not related to the Mykonos
attack, in which four Kurdish- Iranian opposition figures were gunned
down on September 17, 1992. The court implicated the former leadership
in Teheran in the attack.
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