The New York Times reported this week that al-Qaeda's second-in-command chief Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was killed in August this year in Iran by “Israeli agents” at the behest of Washington, and that his death had been kept secret until now.
Iran has refuted an earlier New York Times report about the killing of an Al-Qaeda* terrorist operating in the country, according to the statement released by the Foreign Ministry.
The Foreign Ministry has also denied the presence of the group's terrorists on Iranian soil.
“From time to time, Washington and Tel Aviv try to tie Iran to such groups by lying and leaking false information to the media in order to avoid responsibility for the criminal activities of this group and other terrorist groups in the region,” the ministry added.
The ministry's spokesman called the reports about alleged assassination “a lie”, maintaining that “such accusations are made in the context of a comprehensive economic, intelligence and psychological war against the Iranian people.”
Khatibzadeh also maintained that Al-Qaeda was a “brainchild of erroneous American policy and its allies in the region”, while saying that with reports like the one published, the United States and Israel are attempting to shirk responsibility for the “criminal” activity of “this and other terrorist groups”.
Report on ‘Secret' Killing
The statement comes shortly after the NYT published the report, which claimed that one of al-Qaeda's chief operatives, Abdullah Ahmed…
