Iran arrests most wanted man after police board civilian flight

By Richard Spencer in Dubai, Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels Published: 9:51PM GMT twenty-three February 2010

Abdol Malek Rigi underneath armed ensure following his arrest. Photo: Reuters

Abdol Malek Rigi, Iran"s majority longed for man, was shown by radio cameras being hauled off a jet in shackles by 4 men wearing balaclavas.

Officials were deceptive about the sum of the arrest, but state media pronounced Rigi had been on house a moody from Dubai to Bishkek, the collateral of Kyrgyzstan, after on vacation a US troops bottom in Afghanistan.

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Bishkek airfield reliable that Kyrgyzstan Airways moody QH454 from Dubai had arrived multiform hours late yesterday after being told to land by Iran.

Iran"s comprehension minister, Heydar Moslehi, claimed that Rigi, the personality of the Sunni apprehension organisation Jundullah, had been at the US bottom twenty-four hours prior to his arrest.

At a thespian press discussion he flourished a sketch that he pronounced showed Rigi outward the bottom with dual alternative men, though he gave no sum of where the bottom was, or how or when the sketch was obtained.

The sketch itself gave no clues as to the location. Photographs were additionally shown of an Afghan pass and temperament label pronounced to have been since by the Americans to Rigi.

Mr Moslehi additionally purported that Rigi had met the afterwards Nato secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, in Afghanistan in 2008, and had visited European countries.

He pronounced agents had tracked Rigi"s movements for five months, job his detain "a good improved for the US and UK".

Iran has regularly claimed that Jundullah, that has carried out a array of bombings in await of final for improved diagnosis for the limit segment of Balochistan, is corroborated without delay by Pakistan but additionally by Britain, Israel and America.

It has additionally been purported by horse opera media, together with The Sunday Telegraph, that in 2007 CIA supposing appropriation and weapons to Jundullah.

The group"s majority critical attack, in Oct last year, killed dual generals of the Revolutionary Guard along with some-more than 40 of their men and genealogical chiefs whom they were assembly in a locale in Balochistan nearby the limit with Pakistan.

Previously, it blew up a Shia mosque murdering twenty-five people in May, following that eighteen members of the organisation were executed. Rigi"s brother, Abdol Hamid Rigi, was reprieved at the last impulse after similar to give justification opposite his brother, who he pronounced had perceived income from the United States.

According to one inform yesterday, Rigi was arrested "outside the country", according to another, in Pakistan. A third version pronounced the craft landed in Sistan-Balochistan itself.

Pakistan is pronounced to have been co-operating with Iran not prolonged ago in impediment Jundullah members.

"This is an additional flaw for countries who explain human rights," the Iranian unfamiliar method spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said.

American impasse was denied by a US official. "This is of march a all fraudulent accusation," the central said. A Foreign Office orator pronounced it did not criticism on comprehension matters.

A orator for Nato "flatly denied" that any assembly had taken place in between Mr Scheffer and Rigi, nonetheless Mr Scheffer did revisit Afghanistan in 2008.

Asked either Rigi could have met an ISAF officer, the orator said: "It is the initial I have ever listened of any Nato officials assembly people similar to that."

The Iranian operation is an additional e.g. of unfamiliar comprehension agents utilizing Dubai"s open limit process to follow a "target", before prolonged after the gangland slaying in the emirate of a comparison Hamas official.

Dubai has prolonged had close ties to Iran, but has been underneath substantial vigour to rein them in. There was a spirit of Iran"s distrurbance at this shift of process in Mr Moslehi"s press conference.

"He was arrested on a moody from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan," Mr Moslehi said. "It is such a liaison for Dubai in this incident, that shows that the Zionist regime, by utilizing the US and Europe, is looking to spin the segment in to a breakwater for terrorists.

"This liaison cannot be lonesome up."