Iran New Prez Accused In Austria

Austrian authorities have classified documents suggesting that Iran's president-elect may have played a key role in the 1989 execution-style slayings of an Iranian Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Austria's Interior Ministry and the public prosecutor's office are investigating alleged evidence pointing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's possible involvement in the attack, the daily Der Standard reported.

Officials were not immediately available to comment on the report Saturday.

Austrian Green Party leader Peter Pilz told the newspaper he wants a warrant issued for the arrest of Ahmadinejad, who he alleged "stands under strong suspicion of having been involved."

Pilz accused the hard-liner of planning the murders of Kurdish resistance leader Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou and two of his colleagues, all of whom were shot in the head at a Vienna apartment by Iranian commandos on July 13, 1989. A fourth victim survived the attack and was able to crawl out of the apartment and alert Austrian authorities.

Pilz told Der Standard his source was an unidentified Iranian journalist living in France, who he said also claimed to have evidence that former Iranian President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani gave the order to have Ghassemlou killed. He did not elaborate.

He said the ultraconservative Ahmadinejad, then a high-ranking member of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, allegedly traveled to the Austrian capital a few days before the slayings to deliver the murder weapons to the commandos who carried out the attack. Austrian authorities have said the gunmen apparently entered the alpine country with Iranian diplomatic passports.

Pilz said the journalist was contacted in 2001 by one of the alleged gunmen, described as a former revolutionary guard who has since died in a drowning accident.