Iranian caller tells LBC how he survived assassination attempt
6 January 2020, 14:22 | Updated: 6 January 2020, 14:25
This caller told Tom Swarbrick the shocking story of how he survived an assassination attempt by Qassem Soleimani's forces in Turkey.
Hussein, from Iran, was in Istanbul, Turkey helping Iranian refugees when he was targeted.
"I was shot in the chest and also in the abdomen. I was very lucky because I went through 14 major surgeries," he said, "all these extra territorial killings are directed by the Quds Force, and Qassem Soleimani was the head of the Quds Force for 22 years."
Qassem Soleimani, Quds Force commander, was killed by US airstrikes.
He shared his story; his car was ambushed, sandwiched from either side, and he was shot and left in a near coma condition.
Hussein said that the Iranian regime has been responsible for "450 major terrorist operations throughout the world."
There has been "inaction and indecisiveness by the EU and some countries", he said, which has "emboldened" the regime "to he degree that Qassem Soleimani has been travelling to all the Middle Eastern countries and this man is responsible for hundreds and thousands of killings of Syrian children and women and innocent Iraqis.
"There have been 120,000 people executed in Iran. The IRGC has been mainly responsible for that."
Hussein shared that not only was he nearly a victim of the Iranian regime, a lot of his friends and colleagues have actually been.
LBC's Tom Swarbrick asked Hussein to explain the assassination attempt and the caller explained in detail the awful event.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s declaration of ‘sympathy' for Trump’s reckless and lawless killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani is craven and dangerous.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) January 5, 2020
Boris Johnson’s government must oppose this escalation towards another devastating war in the Middle East.
Qassem Soleimani is a "mass murderer", Hussein said, "This regime is after whoever is trying to stand up to its brutal killings."
The Iranian caller questioned why Labour's Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry took exception to Soleimani's death.
"The Tweets made by Jeremy Corbyn, they didn't say a word about the Iranian protests and 1,500 people killed in the streets of Iran, many of them working class people," Hussein said, "these people claim to be the Labour party."
Tom cited callers who tried to "explain away" some of the accusations made against Soleimani and said, "I don't know how you can argue with somebody who comes on the radio, is Iranian and was an assassination target of the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and gives a detailed description of what this man was up to."
"You need to listen to Hussein," he urged.
