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Iran Convicts 16 Women For ‘Serving IS’


Iran -- Prosecutor General of Tehran Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi, in a meeting in Tehran on Sunday April 29, 2018.
Iran -- Prosecutor General of Tehran Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi, in a meeting in Tehran on Sunday April 29, 2018.

Sixteen women accused of being Islamic State (IS) militants have been sentenced to prison, Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Ja’fari Dolatabadi announced May 6.

“They were trained for terrorist actions in Syria and were detained after returning to Iran,” Dolatabadi told Mizan Online, a website affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, adding that police had confiscated more than three billion rials (roughly $70,000) that the women had allegedly been paid by IS.

Dolatabadi did not elaborate on the nationality, age, or identity of the convicted women. He also refrained from mentioning the length of their prison terms.

Dolatabadi has previously said that most women connected with IS accompanied their husbands to Syria and returned to Iran after their husbands were killed or arrested. These 16 women, on the other hand, served IS for money, according to Dolatabadi, and were carrying significant sums when arrested.

"These women had gone to Syria to support ... Daesh (Arabic acronym for IS), where they were trained as terrorist, and carried out some operations there. They were arrested upon their return to Iran," Mizan Online quoted Dolatabadi as saying.

Immediately after IS’s twin attacks on the Iranian Parliament and Ayatollah Rouhllah Khomeini’s mausoleum June 7, 2017 in Tehran, the Islamic Republic’s intelligence sources said that a female terrorist had led the attacks.

Nothing further was reported about the mysterious woman, who, based on video footage, appeared to encourage the assailants in front of the parliament. The attacks left more than 23 dead, including five of the assailants, and as many as sixty injured.

The Intelligence Ministry has not yet published the full names and identities of the killed attackers, identifying them merely by their first names as Qayyoum, Abu Jihad, Ramin, Fereidoun, and Saryas. The latter was later identified by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)—linked news agency Fars as Saryas Sadeqi.

More than two months after the deadly attacks in Tehran, the IS extremist group posted a video threatening new attacks on the Iranian capital and calling on young Iranians to rise up against the establishment.

A man wearing a black ski mask and holding an AK-47 rifle made the threats in a video published August 9, 2017 showing IS's A’maq news agency logo and footage of the two attacks in Tehran in June.

The man, sounding like a non-native speaker of Persian, promised more attacks "in the center of Tehran," as well as against Shi'ite targets in Iraq.

Iranian analysts speaking to Radio Farda said that June 7, 2017 would probably go down in Iran's contemporary history as a date when the Islamic Republic's claim to enjoying security in a volatile region was shattered.

"These obviously-coordinated attacks raise questions about security apparatuses within the Islamic Republic," military analyst Hossein Aryan told Radio Farda.

Meanwhile, according to reports from Tehran, the fifth hearing session in the trial of eight individuals accused of participating in the Tehran attacks was held May 6. The hearings started last week and none of the accused are female.

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