TEHRAN, June 21 (UPI) -- The execution of militant leader Abdolmalek Rigi is a sign of the failure of policies targeting Iran, Iranian national security leaders said.
Tehran during the weekend announced it executed Rigi by hanging at the Evin prison. Rigi was the ringleader of the Sunni insurgent group Jundallah.
He had been convicted under Islamic law in Iran of militancy against the Islamic republic, corruption and 79 criminal acts, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reports.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the national security and foreign policy committee in the Iranian parliament, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that the Rigi execution should serve as a warning.
"The arrest and hanging of the ringleader of a terrorist group is a good sign to failure of defeated policies of global arrogance vis-a-vis the Islamic republic of Iran," he said.
Tehran announced that it took custody of the Jundallah ringleader Feb. 23. He was arrested on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan.
Tehran paraded Rigi before television cameras after the arrest, where he told state-funded broadcaster Press TV that he had the support of U.S. officials in Afghanistan
Iranian intelligence officials said Rigi was at a U.S. base in Afghanistan the day before his arrest. The Pentagon denied the claims.
A court in the southern city of Zahedan confirmed in May that Abdolhamid Rigi, the brother of the ringleader, was hanged for his role in Jundallah.
Jundallah claimed responsibility for an October attack in southern Iran that left several members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps dead.
