Iran arrests suspects in killing of prosecutor near Afghan border

Iranian authorities have arrested those behind the killing earlier this month of a prosecutor in the country's restive southeast, according to Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli, as cited by media Tuesday. The minister did not specify how many people had been arrested but said they were behind the gunning down of public prosecutor Mousa Nouri in Zabol, a city near the Afghan border in Sistan-Baluchestan province, on November 7. ?Although the motives behind this (killing) are not clear, it has been learnt that these people were not linked to terrorists in Saravan,? the ISNA news agency reported Rahmani-Fazli as saying. He was apparently alluding to Sunni extremist group Jaish-ul Adl, which has claimed responsibility for the killing. Jaish-ul Adl had on October 25 killed at least a dozen Iranian border soldiers in an ambush near Saravan -- a town also in Sistan-Baluchestan and near the border with Pakistan. In response, the authorities in Shiite-dominated Iran executed 16 "rebels" -- eight Sunni insurgents and eight drug traffickers. Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards unit had last week announced that a ?group ? related to drug trafficking? had been arrested in connection with the prosecutor's murder.