Crosswalk.com News Channel February 19, 2003
Members of Iran's 'Terror-Sponsoring' Brigade among 300 Dead in Airline Crash
By Patrick Goodenough
Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - The death toll from the crash of an Iranian military plane has been revised upwards to 302, according to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA.
The Russian-built Ilyushin, which went down near the southeastern city of Kerman on Wednesday evening local time, was carrying members of the country's feared Revolutionary Guards from a base near Iran's border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Kerman air traffic controllers said the pilot had reported poor weather conditions shortly before contact was lost.
Of the dead, 18 people were crewmembers and the rest were soldiers, the reports said.
The Iranian cabinet issued a statement of condolence to the families of those killed.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or "Pasdaran," was officially designated as the guardian of the Islamic Revolution after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, and it remains today under the control of Iran's militant Islamic clerics.
Believed by Western researchers to be about 120,000 strong, the unit maintains close working relations with terrorist groups like Hizballah in Lebanon.
The most recent State Department annual report on global terrorism says the IRGC in 2001 continued to be involved in the planning and support of terrorism, and it backed a variety of terrorist groups, especially those using violence against Israel.
In that report, Iran remained the top terrorism sponsor of the seven countries Washington designates as such. The others are Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Cuba and North Korea.
In a new report, terrorism researcher Yael Shahar of the Israel-based International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism says that Iran has not been very discriminating in its support for terrorist organizations, funding Shi'ite and Sunni, fundamentalist and secular Mideast groups alike.
Shahar's report deals extensively with ties between Iran's security services and elements of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
According to Globalsecurity.org, the IRGC is also believed to be in charge of Iran's weapons of mass destruction programs and missile forces.
Wednesday's crash is the latest in a series of accidents in Iran involving mostly Russian-built aircraft.
A year ago, a Tupolev Tu-154 Iran Air Tours airliner slammed into mountains southwest of Tehran, killing all 15 crew and 105 passengers aboard.
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