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Iran
A file photo taken on April 30, 2010, shows Anis Naccache holding a picture of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah during a demonstration outside the French embassy in the capital Beirut. Photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement on Wednesday that it was sad to hear of the passing of Anis Naccache, one of its famed proxies, notable for a 1980 unsuccessful assassination attempt against the last prime minister appointed in Iran before the Islamic revolution
“The painful passing of the notable Mujahed and distinguished Lebanese Anis Naccache caused us tremendous sorrow,” the Public Relation department of the IRGC said in a statement on Wednesday describing the militant as “revolutionary” and a “thinker”.
Anis Naccache, a Lebanese Christian who converted to Islam and was a devout follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of 1979 revolution, died on Monday in a private hospital in the Syrian capital after contracting COVID-19.
Naccache was notorious for the 1975 OPEC conference hostage-taking crisis in Vienna, being an accomplice of the Carlos the Jackal, but more importantly as a proxy for the then-new revolutionary government in Tehran in trying to eliminate dissidents that were perceived to be threatening the foundation of the revolution.
Using foreign nationals, in particular Lebanese Shiite fighters, to carry out assassinations of dissidents across the world, including of Kurdish leaders, has become a modus operandi of Iran’s intelligence services.
Naccache, born in 1951, was the ring-leader of a three member assassin team that tried to assassinate Iran’s former Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar on July 18, 1980 in a suburb of Paris by posing as a journalist for a communist newspaper.
Two of the attackers were wounded in the attack and one French police officer and a neighbor were killed. The attackers, who were of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrians nationality, were detained.
One day after the assassination, an unknown group in Tehran which called itself “Guards of Islam” said that it had sentenced Bakhtiar to death, without making direct reference to the attempted assassination.
Naccache was eventually freed from French prison in July 1990, alongside four other accomplices after being pardoned by France in exchange for French hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Naccache joined Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Movement in the 1970s. The proxy claimed in an interview with Fars news, an IRGC-affiliated news outlet, in July 2008 that he was responsible for training Imad Mughniyeh in the late 1970s who became Hezbollah’s top operative in later life.
“The painful passing of the notable Mujahed and distinguished Lebanese Anis Naccache caused us tremendous sorrow,” the Public Relation department of the IRGC said in a statement on Wednesday describing the militant as “revolutionary” and a “thinker”.
Anis Naccache, a Lebanese Christian who converted to Islam and was a devout follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of 1979 revolution, died on Monday in a private hospital in the Syrian capital after contracting COVID-19.
Naccache was notorious for the 1975 OPEC conference hostage-taking crisis in Vienna, being an accomplice of the Carlos the Jackal, but more importantly as a proxy for the then-new revolutionary government in Tehran in trying to eliminate dissidents that were perceived to be threatening the foundation of the revolution.
Using foreign nationals, in particular Lebanese Shiite fighters, to carry out assassinations of dissidents across the world, including of Kurdish leaders, has become a modus operandi of Iran’s intelligence services.
Naccache, born in 1951, was the ring-leader of a three member assassin team that tried to assassinate Iran’s former Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar on July 18, 1980 in a suburb of Paris by posing as a journalist for a communist newspaper.
Two of the attackers were wounded in the attack and one French police officer and a neighbor were killed. The attackers, who were of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrians nationality, were detained.
One day after the assassination, an unknown group in Tehran which called itself “Guards of Islam” said that it had sentenced Bakhtiar to death, without making direct reference to the attempted assassination.
Naccache was eventually freed from French prison in July 1990, alongside four other accomplices after being pardoned by France in exchange for French hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Naccache joined Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Movement in the 1970s. The proxy claimed in an interview with Fars news, an IRGC-affiliated news outlet, in July 2008 that he was responsible for training Imad Mughniyeh in the late 1970s who became Hezbollah’s top operative in later life.
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