Mahmoud Sadeghi: 53 Innocent People Were Detained in Nuclear Scientists Assassination Case

Mahmoud Sadeghi, Tehran’s representative in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, has reported that Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence detained 53 people in 2012 in connection with the assassination of nuclear scientists, and after “proving their innocence,” 4 billion tomans were paid to these individuals as compensation.

Mr. Sadeghi made these remarks on his Twitter account, citing Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s Minister of Intelligence, who attended the National Security Commission session in parliament on Tuesday, September 3.

The discussion of the nuclear scientists assassination case was reopened in mid-August of this year following the broadcast of a documentary by BBC Persian.

In this documentary, Maziar Ebrahimi, who confessed in August 2012 on a state Iranian television program to participating in the assassination of these individuals in cooperation with Israeli security agencies, spoke about the fabricated nature of the charges against him and torture by Ministry of Intelligence officers.

Mr. Ebrahimi was released from prison in August 2014 and went to Germany after his release.

Following the release of this documentary, on August 16 of this year, Iran’s Minister of Intelligence promised that in a press conference he would respond to “the issues raised” regarding the assassination case of Iranian “nuclear scientists.”

Minister of Intelligence’s Report

The press conference that Iran’s Minister of Intelligence had promised has not yet been held, but on August 26 of this year, Mahmoud Sadeghi reported that he had asked the Minister of Intelligence several questions about this case.

The presence of Iran’s Minister of Intelligence at the National Security Commission session in parliament was to answer questions from this parliamentarian. Mr. Sadeghi said that the Minister of Intelligence’s answers were “not convincing” and “it was agreed that supplementary explanations would be provided within the next month.”

Based on a report Mahmoud Sadeghi gave from this session, Iran’s Minister of Intelligence did not provide “clear explanation” regarding the extraction of confessions from defendants through torture, but said that “through training and inspection and more careful oversight, procedures have been corrected and action has been taken against some guilty officers.”

Maziar Ebrahimi previously stated in an interview with Radio Farda that his leg was broken during torture and flogging.

Iran’s Minister of Intelligence also stated that 130 million tomans were paid to Maziar Ebrahimi as compensation. However, Mahmoud Sadeghi wrote that the Minister of Intelligence’s explanations regarding “complete compensation for material, psychological and reputational damages” to Maziar Ebrahimi and his contract with IRIB were not convincing.

Maziar Ebrahimi had previously explained in a conversation with Radio Farda that Ministry of Intelligence officers paid 215 million tomans. However, according to Mr. Ebrahimi, security officers also confiscated 50,000 dollars of his when they arrested him, and the compensation paid was not equivalent to that amount of money.

He also stated that he had a contract worth one million euros with IRIB and his claim has not yet been paid.

Disagreement Between IRGC and Ministry of Intelligence

Another discussion in this session was the subject of disagreement between Iran’s security agencies regarding this case. It had previously been reported that during Maziar Ebrahimi’s detention, the discussion of his connection to the Mallard base explosion in 2011 was also raised, but experts from the IRGC Intelligence Organization concluded during the interrogation of Maziar Ebrahimi that this was not the case, and their intervention in the case led to a new direction of the case and Maziar Ebrahimi’s release.

However, Mr. Alavi denied the IRGC Intelligence Organization’s involvement in this case and stated that “IRGC Intelligence Protection” had suggested that some defendants in the nuclear assassination cases may have also been involved in the Mallard explosion and “with the informational cooperation of the two agencies, their non-involvement in that explosion was confirmed.”

On November 12, 2011, following a massive explosion at the “Modares Camp” of the IRGC located in the village of Bidgene in Mallard, 17 IRGC personnel were killed and 16 were injured. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the head of the IRGC’s Self-Sufficiency and Industrial Research Organization, was the most important IRGC commander who was killed in this explosion.

Masoud Ali-Mohammadi Assassination Case

Tehran’s representative in parliament also wrote in another tweet, citing Iran’s Minister of Intelligence, that in the case of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi’s assassination, the “commission of assassination” by Majid Jamali-Fashi was established and his execution was carried out.

Mr. Ali-Mohammadi, whom some Iranian news agencies referred to as a senior nuclear scientist, was killed on January 12, 2010, in an explosion in front of his house.

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence announced in December 2010 that Majid Jamali-Fashi was the main perpetrator of this assassination and was arrested. Mr. Jamali-Fashi was executed on May 16, 2012.

Between 2009 and 2011, four individuals who were generally engaged in physics studies and work, some of whom were in direct contact with Iran’s nuclear program, were assassinated. The assassination of three of them—Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, and Dariush Rezaei-Nezhad—resulted in their deaths, and in one case—Fereydoon Abbasi Davani—resulted in his injury. These cases became known as the “assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.”

Source: Radio Farda