Iranian protesters want extradition of PJAK terrorists

Iranian protesters gathered outside the Belgian embassy in Tehran on Monday to demand the extradition of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) terrorist group members from Europe.

The protesters carried pictures of their loved ones, killed in terrorist attacks carried out by PJAK, A Press TV correspondent reported.

On Friday, Belgian authorities detained several Kurdish dissidents in Brussels as part of a counter-terrorism operation.

On the same day, around 20 plain clothes security officers stormed PJAK leader Abdul-Rahman Haji Ahmadi's apartment near Cologne, Germany, and arrested him.

The PJAK terrorist group, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, is responsible for a number of fatal bombings in western Iran and southern Turkey over the past decade.

Iran has on several occasions reported clashes between government forces and PJAK members along its western border with Iraq. The terrorist group is reportedly supported by the United States.

In a 2006 article published in The New Yorker, investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, revealed that the US military and Israel are assisting PJAK by providing the group with equipment, training, and vital intelligence in a bid to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

Some believe that the United States is using the Kurds to exercise its goals in the region.

"This is the way in which the US government used the Kurdish question … to undermine the sovereignty of Iraq in order to justify the invasion." Writer and political activist, John Rees said on Monday.

"They said that the Kurdish issue is an important one and the Kurds have the right to self determination, but what happened is that he imperial powers have used it in their own interest," he added.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120353§ionid=351020101.