TEHRAN, June 8 (UPI) -- While Britain denies there ever was an attack, a grave marker in Tehran trumpets "the first martyr to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie" in London.
The grave marker is for an unknown 21-year-old Lebanese man who went by the name Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh. He died in London Aug. 3, 1989, when a book bomb he was assembling in a London hotel exploded.
Rushdie had gone into hiding in England earlier in the year after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or death sentence, against him following the publication of "The Satanic Verses."
But British security services have never owned up to what they know of Mazeh, or given details of any assassination attempt against Rushdie in Britain, The Times of London said.
At an inquest in January 1990, Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad said there was only "a hint" that Mazeh belonged to a terrorist group, and his reason for being in London was "not clear."
