IRAN STATE TV SHOWS ARAB STRUGGLE MOVEMENT FIGURE’S PURPORTED CONFESSION TO ‘TERRORISM’

Thu 12 November 2020:

Iran’s state television aired a short video on Wednesday in which a Sweden-based Iranian Arab opposition figure that Tehran said it recently detained abroad appeared to confess to involvement in terrorist attacks.

The former leader of the separatist group the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA) has been arrested and transferred to Iran under unclear circumstances.

The group, which has an armed branch and seeks a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s oil-producing southwestern province of Khuzestan.

Iranian media said state controlled television had reported over the weekend on Telegram that Habib Asyud, also known as Habib Chaab, was arrested in Turkey and taken to Tehran. ASMLA said Tehran had kidnapped Asyud after “luring” him to Turkey.

In the video, Chaab was shown confessing to involvement in terrorist attacks and armed robberies in Ahwaz, as well as cooperation with foreign intelligence services.

Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB has a long history of airing purported confessions that activists and rights groups say are obtained through threats and torture.

The International Federation for Human Rights and London-based Justice for Iran said in a report in June that IRIB has aired the forced confessions of at least 355 individuals and defamatory content against at least 505 others between 2009 and 2019.

Chaab was also shown saying that ASMLA was responsible for an attack on a military parade in Ahwaz in 2018 that killed 25 people.

ASMLA denies Iranian accusations that it was behind the attack, which ISIS had claimed responsibility for.

Kaabi’s wife, Hoda Havashemi, told the BBC that her husband entered Turkey on October 5 and “disappeared” on October 15, which she said was the date when he was supposed to travel back to Sweden.

Havashemi, who said she and her husband live separately but maintain a strong relationship, added that she had heard that Asuyd had traveled to Turkey “for work.”

ASMLA claimed Asyud had been kidnapped “after a process of enticement in which a Gulf Arab country participated and contributed,” without naming the alleged country.

Special Report: Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority: dissent against ‘discrimination’

ASMLA, considered a terrorist organization by the Iranian regime, seeks a separate state for the indigenous Ahwazi Arab population inside Iran’s oil-rich southwestern Khuzestan province, with its capital city of Ahwaz.

An ethnic minority in Iran, Ahwazi Arabs say they are deprived of decent living standards and civil rights, and face discrimination due to their Arab identity and heritage.

Some see themselves as living under Persian occupation and demand independence or autonomy.

In recent years, a number of Iranian opposition activists have ended up in Iran under mysterious circumstances.

They include Jamshid Sharmahd, the leader of the California-based Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar, who in August appeared blindfolded on Iran’s state-controlled television.

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