'Great Satan Park' planned

2006-05-10 11:24

Tehran - The former US embassy in Tehran could soon see a new chapter in its troubled history, with a top Iranian commander calling for the downtown compound to be turned into a "Great Satan Park".

"We would be able to nicely show off the American crimes to citizens strolling in the park," General Mir-Faisal Bagherzadeh told the official news agency IRNA.

"The former American Den of Spies should become the park of Great Satan," said the general, who heads the Sacred Defence Foundation - an influential propaganda body set up to commemorate the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Following Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 that toppled the US-backed shah, the former US embassy was seized by Islamist students and 52 of its staff were taken hostages for 444 days.

The prime city centre property is now used for military training by Iran's powerful ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, while the main building also serves as a museum to display the "documents of American espionage and crimes against the Islamic Republic of Iran".

- AFP