Denmark charges 3 Iran opposition members for financing terrorism

Danish Police conduct a search at a council flat in a housing block on November 7, 2018 in Ringsted, Denmark. At noon today, members of Iranian Opposition group ASMLA were arrested by Danish police at this and other premises in Ringsted on charges of terror related activities. [Ole Jensen/Getty Images]

Denmark’s public prosecutor said today it had charged three members of an Iranian Arab opposition group for financing and supporting terrorist activity in Iran and aiding Saudi Arabian intelligence services.

The three members of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA) were arrested in February last year and have been in custody since.

The three Iranians have been under close police protection and one was the subject of a 2018 assassination plot that was prevented by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service PET after a major police operation.

In 2017, Ahmad Mola Nissi, an Iranian exile who established ASMLA, was shot dead in the Netherlands.

ASMLA seeks a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s oil-producing southwestern province of Khuzestan. Arabs are a minority in Iran, and some see themselves as under Persian occupation and want independence or autonomy.

READ: Turkey arrests Iran consulate diplomat over dissident assassination case

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