An official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has admitted to providing assistance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to conduct attacks in Iraq, Asharq al-Awsat reported, citing an unidentified Iranian official. Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the al-Quds corps in the revolutionary guard, confessed in a seminar to helping Zarqawi carry out suicide attacks to serve the interests of the Islamic Republic, the London-based Saudi newspaper reported, citing an Iranian official who was at the meeting.
Zarqawi and as many as 20 members of his Ansar al-Islam group can enter Iran whenever they want through certain border points that stretch between Halabja in northern Iraq to Ilam in the south, Suleimani said, according to the paper. Zarqawi went to Iran a few months ago where he spent some time in an Iranian revolutionary guard training camp in the area of Mehran near the border with Iraq and later returned to Baqubah, north of Baghdad, the paper said. |