Dustin R. Foley | U. Pittsburgh School of Law, US
The District Court of Roskilde in Denmark on Friday found three members of an Iranian dissident group guilty of espionage and the promotion of terrorism. The three Iranian nationals were found to have collaborated with a Saudi intelligence service and were convicted by a unanimous jury.
The court found that the defendants, who came to Denmark as refugees, raised approximately $2.3 Million for an Iranian separatist group called the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA) and were vying for a similar sum from their Saudi contacts. The charges for espionage outline the transmission of information regarding Danish individuals and organizations as well as reports on Iranian military affairs. Finally, the jury found one of the three guilty of condoning an attack on an Iranian military parade in 2018 that killed 25 individuals.
ASMLA is headquartered in Denmark and the Netherlands and seeks to establish an independent state for ethnic Arabs in the southwestern Khuzestan region of Iran, which has officially listed the group as a terrorist organization.
The convictions are the latest in a string of incidents involving Iranian and Saudi interests that have played out on European soil. In 2018, one of the three defendants was the target of a Tehran-backed assassination attempt.
Iran has lately been in the international spotlight as several nations wait to see if it will reenter the 2015 nuclear agreement. In 2019, Iran ended its compliance with the deal after former President Donald Trump abandoned it the previous year.
The defendants will be sentenced next month, and could receive a prison sentence and even be deported.
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(With input from news agency language)
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