WASHINGTON - While the Barack Obama administration vows to hold the Iranian government "accountable" for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sting operation.
Although the document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Mansour Arabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Qods force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea "originated with and was strongly pushed by an undercover DEA
informant, at the direction of the FBI".
On May 24, when Arabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.
In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia".
Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MJ15Ak02.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
