A Danish appeals court upholds prison sentences for Iranian separatists convicted of terror charges

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A Danish appeals court Friday upheld the sentences of three members of an Iranian separatist group convicted of promoting terror in Iran and gathering information for an unnamed Saudi intelligence service.

The three had been convicted and sentenced in a lower court in 2022 to six, seven and eight years in prison, respectively. They will be expelled from Denmark for good, the Eastern High Court in Copenhagen ruled.

The appeals court did not release the men’s names. They will serve their time in Danish prisons but it was unclear when they would be expelled.

The three were arrested in February 2020 in the town of Ringsted, 60 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the Danish capital of Copenhagen, and subsequently convicted of promoting terror for their roles in a deadly attack on a military parade in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz in September 2018.

The Eastern Court found Tuesday that the men belonged to the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, and had been gathering information about individuals and organizations in Denmark and abroad, as well as on Iranian military affairs, and passing it on to Saudi intelligence.

The court said one of the men who had Danish citizenship will have it revoked.

Earlier this week, the court confirmed the men’s February 2022 guilty verdicts by the District Court in Roskilde, which convicted them of financing and attempting to finance terrorism by obtaining 15 million kroner ($2.2 million) and trying to obtain at least another 15 million kroner from Saudi Arabia for the separatist group.

Iran has accused the separatist group of the Ahvaz attack, which killed at least 25 people. The group has condemned the violence and said it was not involved.

The case was linked to a 2018 police operation in Denmark over an alleged Iranian plot to kill one or more opponents of the Iranian government. The operation briefly cut off the island where Copenhagen is located from the rest of Denmark. That same year, Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service started investigating the three Iranians.

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