IRAN RECRUITS ARAB MERCENARIES FOR CRACKDOWN
NICOSIA 6 Aug. Iranian sources said the theocratic regime in Teheran has hired and equipped a range of Arab nationals to serve as riot police and break up growing anti-regime demonstrations around the country.
The sources said the Arabs work for police and paramilitary special units and were identified as the most brutal elements in the crackdown against the growing reformist movement.
The Arabs were hired due to dissatisfaction with the unwillingness of Iranian Law Enforcement Forces to quell political and social unrests.
Some of the mercenaries were identified as Shi'ites from Iraq and Lebanon. Others included Palestinians and Afghan nationals, Middle East Newsline reported.
The sources said the Arabs were used in large numbers in anti-government protests at Teheran University in mid-July. They said the Arab mercenaries severely beat demonstrators and arrested hundreds of students.
This is the first time the Islamic regime has been accused of hiring Arab expatriates as mercenaries for its security forces. The report comes amid unrest within the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, the most powerful military arm in Iran and which is responsible for Teheran's strategic weapons programs.
Eyewitnesses told Iran Press Service they heard Arab-speaking people, mingled with the notorious Islamic hooligans and thugs known as Ansar Hezbollah and the plainclothes, participating at street battles against Iranian protesters, beating them with brutality.
Security forces recently battled with students marking on 9 July the third anniversary of students uprising of 1999 that was crushed on orders from Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the lamed leader of the regime and again with workers protesting to unpaid or low salaries.
As the regime increase crackdown and repression against dissidents calling for changes in Iranian Constitution in order to separate politic from religion, more clashes are reported from other major cities such as Esfahan, Mash-had, Shiraz and Tabriz between demonstrators with security forces, assisted by Arab mercenaries.
In recent weeks, the authorities shut down one of the nation’s leading reformist newspaper and dissolved the nationalist-religious Iran Freedom Movement, one of the country’s oldest political organisation, sentencing 31 of its leading members to 9 months to nine years imprisonment. ENDS ARAB MERCENNARIES 6802
Editor’s note: This article was compiled with reports from the "World Tribune"