Iran on Tuesday announced that three people had been arrested on suspicion of killing a Sunni religious leader, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The three arrestees are suspected of involvement in the killing of Molavi Abdulvahed Rigi, a senior Sunni Muslim cleric who, authorities say, was abducted and murdered in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said the arrests came as a result of operational cooperation between the police command and intelligence forces in Sistan and Baluchestan province, the ministry said in a statement. The suspects were planning to flee Iran after the assassination, the ministry said.
Rigi was a seminary teacher, the Friday prayer leader of Imam Hussein Mosque in Khash, and one of the most prominent Sunni clerics in the province.
Unknown individuals abducted him from his mosque on Thursday, the province’s prosecutor said. His body was found shortly after his abduction on a roadside in Khash with three bullet wounds to the head.