Iran denies defector's terror claims; U.S. also doubts story

June 6, 2000
Web posted at: 11:10 p.m. EDT (0310 GMT)

In this story: Man's age becomes issue FBI agents heading to Turkey RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran is denying a defector's claims that Tehran was behind two major anti-American bombings, and U.S. officials are expressing their own doubts about the man's allegations.

The CBS News program "60 Minutes" reported Sunday that the defector, Ahmad Behbahani, told Roya Hakakian, an Iranian-born associate producer of the program, that he had documents to prove Tehran was behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. Behbahani also claimed that Iran masterminded the 1996 truck bombing of Khobar Towers, the barracks for U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia in which 19 air force personnel died.

Behbahani said he was an Iranian intelligence official responsible for coordinating overseas assassinations and terrorism operations for more than a decade before his defection to Turkey four months ago.

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Ali Yunesi, Iran's intelligence minister, denied Iranian involvement in the Lockerbie bombing or any other terrorist incident, saying "Iran opposes terrorism in any shape and form." Yunesi told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that Behbahani made up the story to gain asylum in the United States.

"Since the establishment of Iran's ministry, no person named Ahmad Behbahani has been working with the ministry," Yunesi said.

Two Libyans charged with the Lockerbie bombing are on trial before a Scottish court in the Netherlands.

Man's age becomes issue

A senior U.S. State Department official said Behbahani's credibility "has sunk like the stock market." Another U.S. official said there are "serious doubts about him ... inconsistencies."

U.S. and Turkish intelligence officers questioned Behbahani on Monday. Turkey said the defector was only 32 -- likely too young to have been behind the Lockerbie bombing. CBS told The Associated Press that the defector had said he was born in 1962. The Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iraq-based opposition group, claimed Behbahani was in his mid-40s.

One U.S. official said there are "huge holes" in what the defector has told CIA debriefers.

"The notion he was running Iranian terrorist operations for a decade is extremely doubful," the U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in Washington on Tuesday. It was unclear whether the man had any connection to Iranian intelligence, the official said.

But Ali Reza Nourizadeh, a London-based Iranian dissident journalist who broke the story about the defection three weeks ago, said Behbahani is probably using an assumed name now to hide his real identity from Iran.

And a senior State Department official told CNN, "It's pretty clear he was in the Iranian intelligence service" -- but he added the U.S. is reserving judgment as to how much weight to give Behbahani's allegations.

FBI agents heading to Turkey

U.S. officials say agents from the FBI -- "people who know these cases inside and out" -- are expected to leave for Turkey shortly to conduct their own interviews.

Behbahani told CBS that he proposed the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 to avenge a U.S. Navy cruiser's missile attack on an Iranian passenger plane over the Persian Gulf. The Navy said the 1988 attack, which killed 290, was a mistake.

Behbahani said he recruited a Palestinian radical living in Syria for the Pan Am bombing, then imported and trained Libyan operatives to do the job.

In Damascus, Syria, Ahmed Jabril -- leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, previously suspected of involvement in the Pan Am bombing -- also dismissed Behbahani's charges.

State Department Correspondent Andrea Koppel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Mohammad Khatami: President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Cambridge University Press: Iran factbook
Stanford University Report: Tehran
Area Handbook Series: Iran
CIA World Factbook 1999:Iran

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