AFP: The European Union on Friday targeted five Iranians with anti-terrorist sanctions relating to an alleged failed bid to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States.
BRUSSELS, October 21, 2011 (AFP) – The European Union on Friday targeted five Iranians with anti-terrorist sanctions relating to an alleged failed bid to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States.
“Following the foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, the Council today subjected five persons to EU restrictive measures aimed at combating terrorism,” the EU said in a statement.
Diplomats said the five were all of Iranian origin.
The EU statement did not name those targeted or state their nationalities but said “their financial assets in the EU will be frozen and that no funds may be made available to them.”
Diplomats named the five as Manssor Arbabsiar, who is in custody in the United States, Gholam Shakuri, who has been indicted in New York but is at large, Qasem Slaimani, Hamed Abdollahi and Abdul Reza Shahlai.
A grand jury in New York on Thursday indicted Arbabsiar and Shakuri with plotting to hire Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
Iran has strongly denied any involvement in what the United States says was a plot by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force to kill the ambassador by hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million.
