Iranian Group Seeks Retaliation for German Ruling

The leader of an extremist pressure group staged a rally outside the German Embassy on Friday and invited demonstrators to sign up for suicide bombings in retaliation for a court ruling blaming Iran’s top leaders for 1992 political assassinations in Berlin.

“We will confront insults to Islam and our religious leadership wherever in the world they occur. We are even ready to strap a bomb around our waists and go for martyrdom,” Hossein Allah Karam, head of the Ansar Hezbollah group, said at the rally. “Woe to you if you do not apologize for your actions.”

Ansar Hezbollah, which is not associated with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon, is not believed to have the power or means to carry out such threats. It is mainly a pressure group of poor people who seek to prevent the Iranian government from straying from the hard-line values of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Nevertheless, while Karam was addressing the crowd, dozens of people signed up to become suicide bombers. Karam claimed that hundreds of others had already volunteered for suicide attacks against Germany.

“I am ready to go for martyrdom whenever it is necessary,” said Nader Amani, a 35-year-old who signed up.

As police in riot gear formed human walls at the front of the embassy, the protesters yelled “Revenge! Revenge!” against Germany.

A German court on April 10 convicted an Iranian and four Lebanese men in the 1992 killing of Kurdish Iranian dissidents in Berlin. The ruling said the murders were ordered by Iran’s top leaders.