Iran arrests US-Based terrorist leader for Shiraz bombing in 2008

Iran has announced the arrest of a US-based terrorist leader accused of being behind a 2008 bombing in the city of Shiraz

While disclosing this on Saturday August 1, 2020, Iran stated the leader, Jamshid Sharmahd, was involved in a deadly 2008 bombing in the southern city of Shiraz and of other abortive attacks.

“Sharmahd, who was leading armed and sabotage operations inside Iran, is now in the powerful hands of Iran’s security forces,” state television said in a a statement.

The statement did not disclose where or when the leader of the opposition royalist group known as the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar was arrested.

According to the statement, he had orchestrated the April 12, 2008 bombing in a packed mosque in Shiraz that killed 14 people and wounded 215.

Iran hanged three men convicted of the bombing in 2009, saying they had ties to the monarchist group.

It said they had been taking orders from an Iranian US-backed “CIA agent” to try to assassinate a high-ranking official in Iran.

They were 21-year old Mohsen Eslamian and Ali Asghar Pashtar, 20 — both university students — as well as Rouzbeh Yahyazadeh, 32.

The three were found guilty of being “mohareb” (enemies of God) and “corruption on the earth” by a revolutionary court in Tehran.

Iran hanged two other convicted members of the group in 2010, who had “confessed to obtaining explosives and planning to assassinate officials”.

The statement issued on Saturday said that Tondar had plotted several other “big operations” which failed.

It said that Tondar had planned to blow up a dam in Shiraz, use “cyanide bombs” at a Tehran book fair, and plant an explosive device at the mausoleum of the republic’s founder, Khomeini.