Iran’s president honours “martyred” bodyguard

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Dec. 19 – Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, several of his ministers and senior military and government figures attended a special service at the Presidential Office in Tehran on Monday to honour a top presidential bodyguard, who died in an ambush during Ahmadinejad’s visit to south-eastern parts of the country, the government-owned ISNA news agency reported.
Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Dec. 19 – Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, several of his ministers and senior military and government figures attended a special service at the Presidential Office in Tehran on Monday to honour a top presidential bodyguard, who died in an ambush during Ahmadinejad’s visit to south-eastern parts of the country, the government-owned ISNA news agency reported.

Hojjatollah Garmabdari died in a gunfight with unidentified armed men near the city of Zabol on Thursday. Another bodyguard and the driver of the lead car in the presidential motorcade were seriously wounded. The incident was first reported by the semi-official newspaper, Jomhouri-Islami on Saturday morning. Iran Focus was the first English-language news service to report the attack, which was confirmed by its own sources in Iran.

Although Iran’s state-controlled media downplayed the incident, the presence of Ahmadinejad and senior government figures at the ceremony indicated the importance of Garmabdari in the hierarchy of Ansar Al-Mahdi Corps, a special unit of IRGC responsible for the protection of senior Iranian officials.

The keynote speaker during the memorial service on Monday was Brigadier General Mohammad Hejazi, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

“Our enemies must know that the Revolutionary Guards will protect the rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran until the last drop of their blood and their last breath”, he said.

Hejazi rejected claims that the personnel of the IRGC, the army and other armed forces had become demoralised and lost the will to fight for the Islamic Republic, but he stressed that the Revolutionary Guards “must not be lured by material existence”.

“All the Revolutionary Guards remain committed to the allegiance that they vowed to the Imam and the Supreme Leader”, Hejazi said.