US Sanctions Two Iranians Connected to Levinson’s Disappearance
Mohammad Basiri and Ahmad Khazaei, two intelligence officials of the Islamic Republic, have been placed on the US sanctions blacklist on charges of complicity in the disappearance of a former FBI officer in Iran. Washington claims they abducted Levinson and killed him in captivity.
Mohammad Basiri and Ahmad Khazaei, two officials from the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic, are among the latest individuals added to the Trump administration’s sanctions list.
According to this decision, any assets and potential accounts of these two in the United States will be frozen, and no American citizen will be permitted to contact them. Any interaction by foreign individuals or banks with these two for facilitating transactions and financial exchanges will also be subject to penalties.
Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, said in a statement that the Iranian regime had provided no information about Levinson for 13 years: “Senior Iranian officials abducted Robert and then launched a wave of misinformation to distract attention from the regime’s role.”
Levinson disappeared on Kish Island in April 2007. The FBI had offered a one-million-dollar reward for information leading to Levinson’s whereabouts.
His wife and son concluded in March 2020 that the former FBI officer was no longer alive.
Robert Levinson’s wife released photographs in January 2013 showing him in orange-colored clothing. In these photographs, Levinson held a piece of paper that read: “Can you or will you help me?”
Washington says the available evidence and documents strongly suggest that he died in captivity.
The sanctioning of the two Islamic Republic intelligence officials was announced in the final days of the Trump administration. The United States cited the lengthy legal process for this decision as the reason.
Reuters reports that one reason for this action in Trump’s final weeks in the White House could be to complicate Biden’s negotiations for returning to the JCPOA; meaning that any return to the nuclear agreement would be conditional on the release of imprisoned American citizens in the country.
A senior American official told Reuters: “We all expect negotiations to take place next year. But without the freedom of citizens who have been unjustly detained, there should be no agreement in place.”
In October of this year, a federal court in Washington ordered the Iranian government to pay over 1.4 billion dollars for Robert Levinson’s disappearance on Iranian soil.
Last March, Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran’s representation at the United Nations, said that Islamic Republic officials had no information about Levinson’s fate and that he was not in the system’s detention.
Currently, at least three American citizens are imprisoned in Iran. All three—Baquer and Siamak Namazi and Morad Tahbaz—have been charged with espionage.
Source: DW
