Senior MP: Key Terrorist behind Tehran Attacks Killed outside Iran

“The main terrorist was killed by our forces outside the borders,” member of the parliament’s Judicial Commission Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar told FNA on Monday, but he declined to reveal any further details on the identity of the terrorist or the place he has been hunted.

He warned the terrorist groups of Iran’s more much harder response to any such action in future.

Three unknown male assailants fired several rounds at the guards protecting the parliament building in Tehran on Wednesday morning. The assailants opened their way into the parliament’s administrative building while shooting at the guards.

A similar attack took place at the holy shrine of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, parallel with the parliament attack.

17 people, including the parliament’s guards, were killed and 52 others were wounded in the twin attacks claimed by the ISIL terrorist group.

Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Protection Unit Brigadier General Ali Asqar Gorjizadeh announced on Saturday night that the terrorists who carried out the last Wednesday attacks in Tehran had undergone trainings outside the country.

“Based on the documents, the terrorists had Takfiri and Salafi thoughts and were affiliated to the ISIL and they had gone outside the borders several times in the past and were trained there and had participated in a number of their (the ISIL) operations before too,” General Gorjizadeh said in an interview with the state-run TV.

Also, the Iranian intelligence ministry announced in a statement on Thursday that the terrorists who carried out the Wednesday twin attacks on the parliament and the holy shrine of late Imam Khomeini were ISIL members who also had a record of fighting in Iraq and Syria.

“The ISIL team which participated in the terrorist operations at Imam Khomeini shrine and the parliament were 5 infamous terrorists affiliated to the Wahhabi and Takfiri groups who had left the country after being recruited by the ISIL terrorist grouplet and took part in the terrorist grouplet’s crimes in Mosul and Raqqa,” the statement said.

It added that the terrorists had entered the country in August 2016 under the command of an ISIL ringleader named Abu Ayesheh who intended to carry out terrorist operations in the country’s religious cities.

The terrorists fled the country after their group was disbanded and their commander, Abu Ayesheh, and other ringleaders of the group were killed by the Iranian security forces, according to the statement.

The statement came after Iranian Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alavi announced that the country’s security forces have foiled over 100 plots to carry out terrorist attacks in the country in the past 2 years.