IRANIAN-BASED AL DAWA TERRORIST GROUP EXPANDS ITS ACTIVITIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580015-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: November 8, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807580015-1
WASHINGTON POST
8 November 1985
,anian-Based Al Dawa Terrorist Group Expands Its Activities
is
H d h
By Peyman Pejman
Specuil to The Washmittnn Post
The Iranian-based Al Dawa or-
ganization, which has been impli-
cated in several hijackings, kidnap-
ings, assassination attempts and
suicide bombings against U.S. tar-
gets throughout the Middle East,
appears to be widening its sphere of
operation and gaining the recogni-
tion of some radical Arab countries.
During a recent trip to Syria and
Libya by members of the Supreme
Assembly of the Islamic Revolution
of Iraq, of which Al Dawa is a mem-
ber, Syrian authorities allowed the
shadowy movement to open offices
in Damascus while Libyan officials
promised to coordinate with Al
Dawa and allow it more freedom of
action for "combating imperialism,"
Syrian and Iranian newspapers re-
ported.
Al Dawa's expanding operations
could take more significance in the
light of the release in September of
the Rev. Benjamin Weir, an Amer-
ican held captive in Lebanon for 16
months. His captors threatened to
kidnap more Americans if Kuwait
does not release 17 Shiite Moslem
prisoners convicted in a series of
fatal bombings in Kuwait in 1983.
According to Arab diplomats and
their intermediaries in Washington,
about half of those prisoners are
Iraqi members of Al Dawa. Their
release has been demanded in sev-
eral terrorist incidents during the
last 18 months.
In one such case, Arab diplomats
in Washington say, Mofti Akeel, an
Iraqi member of Al Dawa living in
Lebanon, was sent to Kuwait to at-
tempt to kill that country's ruler,
Sheik Jabir Ahmed Sabah, last May.
After the unsuccessful attempt,
an anonymous caller told news
agencies in Beirut, "We hope his
majesty and the Kuwaiti govern-
ment have got the message. We
want our 17 brothers who have
been kept in jail there to be re-
leased."
Reliable sources close to the
Iranian government say that two Al
Dawa members were among the
four men who hijacked a Kuwaiti
passenger plane last December,
forced it to fly to Tehran's Meh-
rabad airport and shot to death two
Americans working for the Agency
for International Development. The
other two hijackers reportedly were
Iranian citizens.
Iranian security forces arrested eratuon of Bahrain. a an
the hijackers and said they would Ne brother, Mohammed Taqi Mo-
put on trial, but there has been no
further information about such a
trial.
Al Dawa, according to the
sources in Washington, is not an
independent group but works under
an umbrella organization called the
Supreme Assembly of the Islamic
Revolution of Iraq.
That group, established in Teh-
ran in September 1981, is widely
believed by anti-Khomeini sources
in Tehran, Washington and London
to have control over two dozen Is-
lamic fundamentalist and terrorist
groups thorughout the Middle East,
including Al Dawa.
The assembly is headed by an
Iraqi-born Shiite fundamentalist,
Mohammed Baqer Hakim, a rela-
tive of the Iraqi opposition leader
Mohammed Baqer Sadr, who was
arrested with a score of Al Dawa
members and sympathizers in 1980
and executed. As leader of Al Dawa,
sources say, Hakim coordinates the
movement's activities in frequent
trips to England, where his brother
Mehdi Hakim has been granted po-
litical asylum and runs the Ahl Beit
Islamic Society in Manchester.
Al Dawa appears to have ample
financial resources, and is said by
anti-Khomeini sources in London to
have spent nearly $500,000 on ad-
vertisements against the Iraqi-re-
gime and propagating Islamic fun-
damentalism in European papers,
mostly in Britain, from 1981 to
1983. At least some of the money
came from private donations and it
is not known whether any came
from the Iranian government.
A close associate of Mehdi Hakim
in London is Mehdi Bahr Omum, an
Iraqi clergyman closely allied with
Iran who is known as "head of the
militant Iraqis abroad."
In addition to his leadership of Al
Dawa, Baqer Hakim, as the spokes-
man of the Supreme Assembly of
the Islamic Revolution of Iraq,
works closely with at least two oth-
er active Shiite fundamentalists,
one of them a top-ranking Iranian
official.
One of them, Hadi Modaressi,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's re-
ligious representative to Kuwait,
heads the Islamic Front for the Lib-
Al Dawa appears to
have ample
financial resources,
some of the money
coming from private
donations.
daressi, who formed the Islamic
Action Party in 1979 with the aim
of overthrowing Bahrain's govern-
ment, have been allowed by Iran to
broadcast a daily four-hour Arabic
"Voice of Islamic Revolution in Bah-
rain" program beamed to Bahrain
from the state-run Tehran radio.
The program recently called on
the people of Bahrain, according to
the London-based Al Dastor mag-
azine, ""to take tp the streets and
resist with your chests the bullets
of the soldiers of the ruling regime
in Bahrain and ... learn the les-
sons of the revolution in Iran."
Hakim's other close associate is
Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Iran's am-
bassador to Syria, who acts as a
liaison officer between the Iranian
government, pro-Iranian groups
in Lebanon and the Syrian regime
of Hafez Assad.
Washington Post staff writers
Richard Harwood and Bob ;5d-
ward report in 1984 that
intelligence officials think Mohta-
shemi was the person through
whom a "fixer" named Hassan
Hamiz arranged for the car-bomb
explosions at the headquarters of
the U.S. Marines aad.French para-
troo ers in Beirut,
While Dawa has no official rep-
resentation in the United States, a
handful of other organizations op-
posed to the Iraqi regime operate
actively here, under the sponsor-
ship and- financial support of pro-
Khomeini groups, some with official
links to the Iranian government.
One of the best-known is the Is-
lamic Union of Iraqi Students, based
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807580015-1
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580015-1
in Lawrence, Kan. Tehran's semi-
official English-language newspaper
Tehran Times reported on Sept. 10
that a seminar held by the union had
sent a telegram to Iran's leaders,
paying homage to the guidance of
the Supreme Assembly of the Is-
lamic Revolution of Iraq and to Kho-
meini's "universal leadership."
In a recent request filed with the
D.C. police for a permit to hold a
demonstration here, the group gave
the telephone number of the Islamic
Education Center in Potomac. The
center is run and funded by pro-
Khomeini elements, many of whom
have official contacts with Iranian
officials and the Iranian Interests
Section of the Algerian Embassy
here.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580015-1