Iran Focus
London, 25 Jan – Two Nigerian members of an Iranian terrorist organization were sentenced to five years in prison each on Wednesday for recruiting would-be terrorists for the Iranian Regime.
Abdullahi Mustapha Berende and Saheed Adewumi were on trial for terrorism offences in the Middle East and Lagos between 2011 and 2012.
They were arrested in 2012 after Berende made several suspicious trips to Iran where he interacted with a known high profile terrorist network.
In addition to the recruitment charges, Berende was found guilty of knowing about a terrorist act and concealing that from security operatives, collecting foreign currencies to aid and abate acts of terrorism, being involved in training on use of dangerous weapons and firearms with the intent of committing a terrorist act or acts in Nigeria, and conspiring to commit a terrorist act in Lagos in September 2011.
This is nothing new, of course. The Iranian Regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, according to the US State Department, and has been involved with many terrorist groups from all sides.
They are heavily involved with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, who make up just a few of their proxies across the Middle East, have strong ties to the founders of ISIS, and even sheltered the plotters of 9/11 from the American authorities.
The mullahs steal from their own people to fund their terrorist proxies and acts of destabilisation across the Middle East, as highlighted by Donald Trump. The nuclear deal of 2015, which waived sanctions on Iran in exchange for limited nuclear restrictions, allowed Iran to gather even more money to use for terrorism.
Trump recently said: “All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.’ The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights.”
The Iranian Regime even has their own terrorist training camps within Iran, which were exposed by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in 2017.
The camps are run by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and feature two training regiments: Basic, a crash course for mercenaries who are headed for Syria, and Intense, for those who are headed for the more brutal arm of the IRGC, the Quds Force.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, the Deputy Director of the US Representative Office of the NCRI, noted in the press conference that he expected Democrats and Republicans alike to get behind listing the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organisation.
