Dutch police have arrested a man suspected of preparing an attack or terrorist activities in Iran. The 40-year-old Iranian man is also suspected of participation in a terrorist organization.
The Iranian asylum seeker living in the Netherlands is said to be affiliated with the Iranian resistance movement ASMLA, which is mainly active in the Netherlands and Denmark. The organization was founded in Iran in 1999 to fight for the independence of the southwestern Arab region of Ahwaz.
ASMLA has an armed wing that carries out attacks on oil and gas fields and on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the elite unit of the strict Islamic regime in Tehran. The organization is also believed to have been involved in the attack on a Revolutionary Guard military parade in 2018 in Ahwaz. Twenty-five people were killed in that attack. At least twelve of them were members of the Revolutionary Guard.
After this attack, Iran summoned the Dutch ambassador in Tehran because the Netherlands had offered shelter to ASMLA. The organization itself denied involvement. A splinter group that split from ASMLA is believed to have been responsible for that attack. With this arrest, it appears that there are indeed anti-Iranian activists living in the Netherlands.
During a search of the man’s residence in Delft, in the southwest of the Netherlands, phones and other equipment were seized. A commercial building and a TV studio of an Iranian satellite channel in nearby Rijswijk were also searched by the Dutch police.
Police and public prosecutors are collaborating in the investigation with colleagues in Denmark. Members of ASMLA were also arrested in that country on Monday, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service reports. Tensions have arisen in recent years between Iran on one side and Denmark and the Netherlands on the other, after those two countries accused Iran of carrying out attacks on opponents of the Iranian regime. Tehran denied this.
The arrests in the Netherlands and Denmark coincide with the visit of European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell to Iran. He is trying to reach an agreement with Iranian leaders on reducing tensions surrounding the crumbling international Iranian nuclear deal.