Iran: Those detained due to ties to Israel belong to a banned Kurdish faction

The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence said yesterday that the members of the network linked to Israel whose arrests were announced last week, belong to a banned Kurdish faction, and were intending to target a sensitive “defensive” centre.

On Saturday, the ministry announced the arrest of members of a “terrorist” network linked to the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad), who entered the Islamic Republic through Iraqi Kurdistan to carry out operations against “sensitive sites”.

The ministry’s statement did not specify details about the number of detainees, their nationality, the date when this took place, the nature of the operations they were preparing to carry out, or their targets.

In a new statement, published on its website yesterday, the ministry clarified that “the elements of the operations team in this cell are members of the Komala terrorist group.”

Komala is a Kurdish Marxist organisation that was banned in Iran following the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Its elements had previously clashed with the security forces in the northwestern regions of the country, where Kurds make up a large proportion of the population.

READ: Iran says Israel-linked agents planned attack on defence plant

Last April, the Iranian authorities announced the arrest of members of the organisation, which was founded in 1969, in the Kurdistan province in northwestern Iran.

The Iranian Ministry of Security accompanied its statement with pictures of what it said were some of what it had confiscated from the new detainees.

The pictures showed pieces of square-shaped furniture that were filled with explosives, guns with silencers, smart cards placed in the caps of perfume bottles, oxygen tanks, a number of computers and mobile phones and cash.

The statement confirmed that the detainees were intending to “bomb a sensitive defence industry centre in the country”, without providing additional explanations about the target.

Iran accuses Israel of being behind many of the attacks that took place on its soil, such as sabotaging nuclear facilities or the assassination of a number of its prominent scientists over the past years.