Iranian state TV is reporting that authorities have executed two men convicted of a 2010 bombing at a military parade in northwestern Iran that killed 12 spectators.
State TV reported Tuesday the two, who were hanged, were members of a bombing network that was dismantled in 2013. It said some of the victims’ families attended the execution in Urmia prison in northwest Iran.
In September 2010, a blast at a military parade in the city of Mahabad close to Iran’s borders with Iraq and Turkey, killed 12 and wounded 75.
Officials at the time blamed Kurdish separatists for the attack, though it was not clear if the executed men were Kurds.
Iranian forces in the border zone have clashed for years with Kurdish rebels from the Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which also has fighters based in Turkey and Iraq.
The group in Iran has generally not targeted civilians in its campaign for greater rights for the Kurdish minority, raising the prospect that the bomb might have gone off prematurely.
Kurdish resentments have grown in recent years, buoyed by Kurdish control of areas in northern Iraq. In one incident, the death of a Kurdish maid at a hotel in the northwestern city of Mahabad in May 2015 sparked unrest by local Kurds as opposition groups alleged Iranian security forces somehow had a hand in it.
Source » startribune