LONDON -- Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad Saturday investigated the killing of two anti-Khomeini Iranian activists -- the third such attack since July -- as speculation mounted that an Iranian hit team is operating in London.
Police Cmdr. George Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad, said the three attacks on anti-Khomeini activists in London within the past three months 'may be linked to one group.'
But, he cautioned, 'I have no evidence to show that they're at all connected.'
A man with a Middle Eastern accent telephoned United Press International in London Saturday night and claimed responsibility for the slayings on behalf of a group called the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution.
'Regarding the assassination of the two men yesterday, we are the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and soldiers of Imam Khomeini. We will kill every monarchist and we will kill Reza Pahlavi (the Shah's son). That's all,' the man said.
The same group also claimed responsibility for the first of the three attacks -- a car bombing that seriously injured an Iranian dissident leader in London on July 19.
In the latest killing, Mohamed Ali Tavakoli-Nabavi, 58, founder of a small group of dissidents opposed to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called the Javanan Nationalist Party, and his son, Noureddin Tavakoli-Nabavi, 24, were found shot to death Friday in their two-story apartment in a rundown housing complex in the northwestern suburb of Wembley.
'It has all the hallmarks of a political killing,' Churchill-Coleman told a news conference Saturday.
'The premises appear to have been undisturbed,' Churchill-Coleman said. 'There appears to be no sign of a struggle. It seems to me that whoever entered the premises was let in by the victim.'
Both were shot several times, including in the head at point-blank range. The bodies were found by a second son when he returned home Friday night.
The father was found upstairs in the living room and the son was found in bed in a first-floor bedroom. Police said none of the neighbors reported hearing gunshots or seeing anyone unfamiliar to them.
Churchill-Coleman said the father was 'fairly active in the political front' and ran 'a very small group of individuals -- no more than a dozen -- who oppose the current regime in Iran.'
The father also spoke out against Khomeini on Sundays at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park -- a favorite tourist site where anyone can get up on a soapbox and express their thoughts to anyone who will listen to them.
It was the third attack on anti-Khomeini activists in less than three months, raising fears among Iranian dissidents and fueling speculation in the press that a Tehran-backed Iranian hit team is operating in London.
On July 19, former Iranian Cabinet minister Amir Hussein Amir-Parviz, 63, chairman in Britain of the National Movement for Iranian Resistance, was seriously wounded in west London by a bomb that exploded in his car.
An unknown group calling itself the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution claimed responsibility.
Three days later, Ali Naji al-Adhami, 48, a Palestinian political cartoonist known for his anti-Khomeini drawings in a Kuwaiti newspaper, was shot in the face at close range by an assailant in London. He later died.
Churchill-Coleman said he has heard no reports of an Iranian hit team operating in London, but said he is not ruling out any possibility in his investigation.
About 20,000 Iranians live in Britain, most of them refugees who fled after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was deposed in 1979 by Khomeini, who ended the monarchy and established fundamentalist Islamic rule.
The victims of Friday's killing also fled Iran in 1979 and were given refugee status by Britain, Churchill-Coleman said.
