|
Iran unveils Hezbollah commander stamp |
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, 11 March 2008 |
The Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran issued a stamp Monday in commemoration of a top Hezbollah commander wanted by the U.S. who was killed in a car bombing in Syria last month, the official news agency IRNA reported.
The stamp, which features a smiling picture of Imad Mughniyeh wearing a military uniform, was unveiled at a ceremony attended by Iran's minister of post and communication, Mohammad Soleimani, and Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, former chief of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards, according to the report.
The Lebanon-based extremist group Hezbollah and Iran, its main backer, blamed Mughniyeh's assassination on Israel, which denied any role.
Mughniyeh was one of the world's most feared terror masterminds, accused of killing hundreds of Americans in suicide bombings in Lebanon the 1980s. He was also blamed for taking Westerners hostage and the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed.
In the 1990s, he went into hiding, and Western and Israeli intelligence accuse him of planning suicide bombings against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Argentina that killed over 100 people. Over the past 15 years, he is believed to have moved in secret between Lebanon, Iran and Syria. |
