Iran hangs 11 members of Sunni-Baluch militant group Jundallah (Army of God) days after a Jundallah suicide bomber killed 39 Shiites during Ashura in revenge for hanging its leader

From AP,

Iran hanged 11 men authorities said were members of an armed Sunni militant group convicted of bombings, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The men were said to be members of Jundallah, the group that claimed responsibility for an attack [to avenge the hanging of its leader, Abdulmalik Rigi, earlier this year] last week on Shiite worshippers that killed 39 people in the southeastern port city of Chahbahar.

Jundallah has been waging an insurgency for years in remote Sistan-Baluchistan province, a lawless area in southeastern Iran bordering Pakistan where smuggling and banditry are rife. The groups says it is fighting for the rights of the Baluchi minority, which it says suffers discrimination at the hands of Iran's Shiite's leadership.

[Those hanged were convicted of alleged] involvement in attacks over the past years that killed 15 policemen and 12 members of the Revolutionary Guards — Iran's most powerful military force. The were also accused of supplying arms and refuge to terrorists, armed kidnapping and arms smuggling.


From AFP 1

Shadowy Sunni militant group Jundallah (Army of God) has claimed several deadly attacks in Sistan-Baluchestan, of which Zahedan is the capital and which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan, including a December 15 suicide bombing in the city of Chabahar that killed 39 people and wounded dozens.

The bomber struck in a central square as worshippers took part in the procession marking the eve of the last day of Ashura, the most revered Shiite mourning ritual.

Iranian officials charge that the group is receiving support from the intelligence services of the United States, Britain and Pakistan.

[After the Chabahar attack] Iranian president "asked Zardari to order his country's security forces to quickly arrest known terrorists and hand them over to the Islamic Republic of Iran," Ahmadinejad's office said in a statement posted on its website.

[Sistan-Baluchestan provincial justice department head Ebrahim Hamidi said] "These corrupt and Mohareb (waging war against God) elements ... went through all the legal and religious procedures of receiving a fair and public trial,"

[Those hanged were accused of] "corruption on earth, fighting against God and the Prophet and confronting the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Under Iranian penal code these crimes are punishable by death.


From AFP 2

Millions of Iranians, beating themselves with fists and chains, marked the climax of Ashura on Thursday a day after a suicide bomber killed 34 people in a procession for Shiite Islam's most revered mourning ritual.

Men, women and children dressed in black gathered in cities across the country as the 10 days of rituals mourning the death of Imam Hussein, the faith's third imam, reached a peak.

Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was killed by armies of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD. Tradition holds that he was decapitated and his body mutilated in the battle at Karbala, now in Iraq.

Shiites make up around 15 percent of Muslims worldwide. They represent the majority populations in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain, and form significant communities in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.


Source: AFP (1,2), AP


Comments: No non-Muslims involved here, although, as usual, the US and others are blamed, to create further hate, paranoia and conspiracy theories among Muslims.

Claims of intra-Muslim discrimination (Probably true).

Discrimination excuse for terror attacks.


Some previous similar or related stories:

Ethnic Baluch Sunni Iranian rebel group Jundullah declared a terror group by the US [Ethnic (Persian-Baluch) and sectarian (Sunni-Shiite) division in Iran]

Iranian Nazi site IranNazi.Ir unblocked by Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic guidance after a brief ban [Claims of Persian supremacism in Iran]

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For even more similar or related stories, click on the 'Labels' below.

Spurious legal challenges & small scale attacks before Souther Sudan Independence referendum in January – Brief Sudan history included

From BBC

Tensions are high in the run-up to the vote [next month], with the SPLM [Sudan People's Liberation Movement - the ruling party in the South that has now backed Independence from the Muslim north] accusing the north of several small-scale attacks on the south, while the military in the north has denied the charge.

the man in charge of organising the south's referendum, Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil, warned that opponents of the vote were trying to undermine it, by filing spurious legal challenges.

"The whole idea is to create confusion and give the idea that something serious is going wrong," he said.

From Rochester Post-Bulletin

The referendum in south Sudan, and a simultaneous vote in the oil-rich Abyei region to decide if the area will go to the north or south, are part of a 2005 peace agreement which ended a civil war that killed about 2.4 million people since 1983.

From Reuters (1)

Southerners won the right to choose whether to separate from the north and form a new east African nation in a 2005 peace deal that ended a civil war that killed at least 2 million people. Most analysts expect a majority to vote to secede.

From UPI

Many fear it could also trigger a new conflict between the north, dominated by Arab Muslims, and the south, which is overwhelmingly Christian and animist.

The historic referendum, scheduled for Jan. 9, is part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war in which an estimated 2 million people died, largely from famine and disease stemming from the bloodletting.

From Reuters (2)

Sudan's north-south civil war was Africa's longest running civil conflict, flaring first in 1955.

Many southerners believe they are ethnically or religiously distinct from the mostly Arab and Muslim north and an antagonistic history of war and slave trading has haunted north- south relations since before independence.

Sudan is also the axis of the continent's Arab north-African and black sub-Saharan divide. Many will see a split as a wider failure to overcome those differences.

Source: BBC, Reuters (1,2), Rochester Post-Bulletin (Minnesota, US), UPI 


Comments: Race (Black south vs Arab north), ethnicity and religions (Christians and Animists vs Muslims) are involved here.

This shows that the general trouble is with Muslims and isn't related solely to any particular issue like race or religion.

Deniers typically try to frame problems in terms of Christians ('crusaders', 'imperialists') versus Muslims, but this case here provides evidence against such spurious arguments since Animists are also against the Muslim north.

And there is also the case of Muslim-on-Muslim genocide in Sudan's Darfur region as well.

Deniers also try to portray conflicts with Muslims in terms of race and racism, with 'racist White Christians' attacking non-Whites. But again, the evidence here is against such claims with Muslims being non-Whites (and involved in slavery) and Blacks being non-Muslims.

The appalling death toll of at least 2 million also shows yet again the brutality of conflicts involving Muslims. Bleeding hearts for Islamists are always outraged by a small number of deaths (compared to two million) deaths resulting from anti-terror operations and exaggerates its seriousness and toll but Millions of non-Muslim deaths, like here, are forgotten.

This also shows that such appalling incidents aren't something new, recent or post-September 11 attacks in the US. Things like these have been going on prior to 9-11 and stretch right back 1,400 year to Muhammad.

Everyone should learn from the example of East Timor and also Muslim Bengladesh, where Muslims carried out a deadly but unsuccessful campaign of terror in order to stop independence from Indonesia and Pakistan. There is a well established trend here.


Some previous similar or related stories:

Sudanese soldiers shoot in Abyei, attempting to provoke war to stop Southern Independence

Christians evicted from Church in Sudanese capital by Police in Muslim's attempt to seize land

Libyan president who tried converting Italian girls to Islam said to have sex orgies that were copied by Italian Prime Minister [Gadaffi had said illegal African immigrants might turn Europe "black" and make it into "another Africa".]

Video shows barbaric torture of Black Papuans by Indonesian occupiers in West Papua where genocide has already killed a fifth of the population [Another place where non-Muslims Blacks (Melanesians) are fighting for independence from Asian Muslim Indonesia.]

Was race a factor in the murder of a Black man treated like a slave by the homosexual Saudi prince?

For similar or related stories posted after this article (if any), copy the title of this article and paste it in the search box on top of the page and click search.

For even more similar or related stories, click on the 'Labels' below.