Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Abdolmalek Rigi, leader of the Jundallah terrorist group, was released from custody in Pakistan three weeks before the organization carried out a suicide bombing in Iran, an Iranian military officer said.

“On Sept. 27, Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested in one of the streets of Quetta but after one hour he was released following the intervention of the intelligence service of our neighboring country,” Iran’s state-run Fars news agency cited Brigadier General Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards, as saying.

Jundallah, or the “Army of God,” said it carried out an Oct. 18 suicide bombing that killed 43 people, including seven commanders of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps. The attack targeted a conference between Sunni and Shiite Muslim tribal leaders in Pishin, in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

Pakistan will help Iran hunt the Jundallah members responsible for attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan, President Asif Ali Zardari told Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad- Najjar in Islamabad on Oct. 25.

Najjar called on the government in Islamabad to take action against Jundallah. Iran, which shares a 909-kilometer (565-mile) border with Pakistan, says the group operates from Pakistani territory.

Iran’s border “has always been secure and stable for Pakistan,” Najjar told Zardari, according to Iran’s state-run Press TV. “In return, we expect Pakistan to establish more security in the border.”

Destabilize

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit didn’t answer three calls to his mobile phone seeking a response to Salami’s comments. Interior Minister Rehman Malik didn’t answer two calls.

Iran says Jundallah is trying to destabilize Sistan- Baluchistan, a Sunni Muslim-dominated province that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has accused the U.S. and the U.K. of involvement in the suicide attack in Pishin, an allegation denied by both countries.

Three Iranians were arrested in Pakistan yesterday in connection with last month’s bombing, the Associated Press reported, citing an official.

Jundallah said it bombed a mosque in Zahedan in the province in May, an attack that killed at least 21 people and injured about 200. It also took responsibility for the February 2007 bombing of a bus in Zahedan that killed 11 civilian employees of the Revolutionary Guards. The Guards are responsible for security in the region.

Salami called for the extradition of terrorists to Iran and said Pakistan should be “aware of the costs of the presence of terrorist groups” on its soil.

He urged the Pakistani government to consider the “deep, strategic and historic links” between the two countries and not “let a limited number of terrorists, who have no strategic significance, harm these relations,” Fars reported.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ali Sheikholeslami in London at alis2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 6, 2009 09:16 EST