|
Trending Topics
|
Iranian Intelligence Uses International Crime Organizations to Eliminate Opposition Activists and for Narco-Terrorist Activity
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall and Iran Desk - Iranian intelligence uses international crime organizations to kidnap exiled political activists and journalists and transfer them to Iran for execution. Turkish police recently arrested at least 13 members of an international crime organization on charges of collaborating with Iran's intelligence services. The Turkish news agency Anadolu recently confirmed that Iran's intelligence ministry used a criminal organization run by Naji Sharifi Zindashti, an Iranian who lived in Turkey for many years, to assassinate and kidnap Iranian dissidents on Turkish soil. Sky News on Dec. 16, 2020, reported on the "honeytrap" capture of Habib Assyud, vice president of the Executive Committee of ASMLA, a party working for the rights of Iran's Arab minority. Video footage showed a woman, Sabreen Saeedi, luring Assyud to fly from Sweden to Turkey, where he was abducted by Zindashti's gang and driven 1,600 km. to Iran to stand trial. Another female agent, Sherine Najaf, is suspected of luring dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam from Belgium to Iraq, where he was kidnapped. Ram was executed by hanging on Dec. 12, 2020. Exiled Iranian journalists reported that Zindashti was also involved in the assassination of a senior Iranian judge, Gholamreza Mansouri, in Romania in June 2020. Zindashti reportedly passed an order from Iran to his cousin, Hossein Karimi Rickabadi, a criminal in Romania, to eliminate the judge who held considerable information about the corruption of senior Iranian regime figures. Mansouri's death was ruled a suicide after falling from the fifth floor of his Bucharest hotel.