- TEHRAN -- Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad escaped unharmedfrom an assassination attempt, which
claimed the lives of his driver
-
- and one of his bodyguards. The attack occured near
the city of Zabol in the southeasternprovince of Sistan-Baluchestan,
the same city where Ahmadinejadmade his recent pronouncements questioning
the Jewish "Holocaust."
-
- "At 6:50 pm on Thursday [December 15, 2005], the
lead car in the
- presidential motorcade confronted armed bandits and
troublemakers on the Zabol-Saravan highway," an Iranian news source,
Jomhouri Islami, reported.
-
- "In the ensuing armed clash, the driver of the
vehicle, who was an indigenous member of the security services, and one
of the president's
-
- bodyguards died, while another bodyguard was wounded."
-
- Opium-trafficking Baluchi tribesmen in the area are Sunni
Muslims. Supported by "foreign elements" they have been
waging a low-intensity separatist insurgency against the Shia-dominated
Iranian government.
-
- Ahmadinejad was in the province to underscore Tehran's
commitmentto hold on to the region. The Iranian leadership fears
the US presence in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq as dangerous encirclement
by allies of its mortal foe, Israel, which has threatened attacks on Iran'scivilian
nuclear energy program.
-
- The attack on Ahmadinejad appears to be part of a concerted
campaign against "Holocaust" skeptics. A number of Western
revisionists, including Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf and David Irving have
been arrested and imprisoned in recent months for publicly questioning
it.
|
