Iran said Saturday that it had arrested 200 people and deported another 800, all of whom it said were part of a terrorist cell.
The information minister, Ali Younessi, said the arrests were made last week after the ministry started a "fifth wave" of a crackdown against operatives linked to al-Qaeda, the IRNA news agency reported. It was the largest roundup of terrorism suspects announced by the Iranian authorities.
Iran rarely discloses information about the operations of Qaeda suspects or the arrests it makes, and Younessi's public comments were unusually detailed. Still, much remained unknown about the operation and the suspects, including where they were deported to.
Younessi said al-Qaeda had organized and formed different groups in eastern Iran to carry out terrorist attacks in larger cities, including Tehran, the capital. Iranian "theology students and Sunni leaders" were singled out in the roundup, he added. Iran's population is mostly Shiite.
Although Iran refused to identify those it has arrested, citing security reasons, Younessi gave the name of a ringleader he said was still at large. The man, Abdul Malek, was linked to a group of fighters close to Osama bin Laden who collaborated with drug traffickers, Younessi said.
"The group intended to sabotage and carry out terrorist attacks in Iranian cities, especially in Tehran," the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. "Most of their members were identified and arrested. Their ringleader is Abdul Malek who lives in Baluchistan in Pakistan but sometimes enters eastern Iran illegally," he added.
Younessi said the first wave of the crackdown began when large numbers of Afghan refugees flooded toward Iran's borders after the fall of the Taliban in November 2001. "We were determined to expel all these people back then under any conditions. This stage was very important and was considered a direct confrontation with al-Qaeda," he said., and also referred to earlier operations aimed at the militant group Ansar al-Islam and at what he described as drug traffickers.
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