/ 20 June 1999

IRAN CELEBRATES ASSASSIN

A GIANT portrait of an Egyptian Islamic militant executed for the 1981 assassination of president Anwar Sadat will be unveiled in the Iranian capital on Friday. The picture of the “great al-Islambuli martyr” — Khaled al-Islambuli — is being painted by fundamentalists in a residential street named after the assassin by Iranian authorities angry over Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Islambuli was executed in 1982 for taking part in the October 1981 murder of Sadat, who became the first Arab leader to sign a peace accord with the Jewish state.