Iran OKs Law Allowing American Arrests Abroad

Iran today gave final approval to a law giving it the power to arrest Americans anywhere and put them on trial, and one newspaper suggested that the first target be the former commander of the U.S. missile cruiser Vincennes.

The action came amid growing anti-U.S. passion being whipped up to mark the 10th anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Protesters plan to burn 160 American flags outside the compound--now a school--on Saturday.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency said the Majlis, or Parliament, unanimously approved a final version of the bill that earlier had been passed by the 12-member Council of Guardians, a constitutional watchdog body. The council acted after the 270-seat Majlis approved a first draft of the measure on Tuesday.

The law will remain on the books “as long as the U.S. President is authorized to commit inhuman practices against the lives and interests of Iranian citizens,” the agency said in a dispatch monitored in Cyprus.

The Iranian move was in response to the Justice Department’s authorization of the FBI to arrest suspected terrorists abroad and bring them to trial in the United States without the permission of the countries where they were found.

The U.S. move did not specify Iran. But it is one of several nations accused of supporting and encouraging terrorism, including the kidnaping of Americans and other Westerners in Lebanon, assassinations and hijackings.

Iranian radicals clearly saw the Justice Department’s action as being aimed at the Islamic republic.

“You, who scream about human rights and talk about terrorism, are yourselves innately terrorists and criminals who have taken security away from the people of the world,” said Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, a leading radical.

Tehran’s radical Abrar daily said Capt. Will Rogers II, commander of the Vincennes when it mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner last year, should be the first person brought to trial under the new law.

The Vincennes shot down the jetliner during fighting in the Persian Gulf in July, 1988, killing all 290 people on board. The Navy said the crew mistook the plane for an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter jet.

Iranian radicals have been stirring anti-American passions around Saturday’s anniversary of the Nov. 4, 1979, embassy seizure.

Militant Iranian students backed by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, helping to consolidate the anti-Western Islamic revolution.