The American “Washington Post” newspaper quoted a Turkish intelligence official saying that Iran had kidnapped the Ahwazi leader, Habib Chaab, known as Habib Asyud, in Istanbul, after he was abducted and drugged, and then transported by truck to Iran by a smuggling ring
The Turkish official revealed to the newspaper that Iranian intelligence kidnapped Chaab after entering Istanbul on October 9, to meet with a woman named Saberin, who works for the Iranian intelligence.
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Turkish investigations found that Saberin S. I arrived a day before Chaab from Iran with a forged Iranian passport.
According to the information, before Chaab’s arrival, several kidnapping team members bought plastic wires from a computer store in Istanbul. When Chaab landed that evening, he met Saberin at a gas station in Beylikduzu, Istanbul, which was waiting for him in a truck.
According to the Turkish intelligence official, upon his arrival at the scene, he was drugged and his hands and feet tied.
The report stated that the Ahwazi leader was transferred to Van province in eastern Turkey and was handed over to a human smuggler, smuggled across the border the next day. Saberin also returned to Iran.
The security official said that Turkish intelligence and police officers arrested 11 men, all Turkish citizens, for their involvement in similar cases and brought them to trial on charges that include “the use of weapons, kidnapping, and deception.”
The “Washington Post” reported that this kidnapping is similar to another operation carried out by Iran recently against the journalist, Ruhollah Zam, residing in France but disappeared after being lured to Iraq last year, which Tehran carried out his death sentence on Saturday.
It also referred to the assassination of another Iranian journalist in Istanbul in 2017, Masoud Molavi Vardanjani, in an operation that Turkish officials said was carried out under the supervision of intelligence officers working in the Iranian consulate there, according to Reuters.
Chaab’s colleagues told the “Washington Post” that they had already suspected that the woman, identified as Saberin, played a role in his abduction.
A person named Kabi said he knew her by a different name and that she and Chaab, who separated from his wife, were “secretly married” four years ago. Also, Chaab was mired in debt, and the woman had loaned him about 100,000 euros in the past, according to Kabi.
After Chaab disappeared, Kabi and his other friends learned that the woman offered him another loan. The initial plan was for the two to meet in Qatar. He added, “We do not know how she convinced him to go to Turkey.”
Iranian television had broadcast what it described as the “confessions” of the former head of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, Habib Faraj Allah Chaab, three weeks after his arrest. At the same time, human rights organizations condemned what they described as the repetition of forced confessions, which are taken under torture by political detainees.
Chaab was shown admitting against himself and his comrades for working for foreign intelligence services and carrying out military operations and bombings, as well as about the alleged involvement of him and the leaders of the movement to which he belongs in the armed attack on the annual Iranian military parade on September 22, 2018 in the city of Ahwaz, which was adopted by ISIS then. The regime itself later admitted this and said that five attackers were killed during the attack.
Iran has stepped up in recent years, assassinating many opponents on European soil and elsewhere, and has also adopted the method of kidnapping some opponents abroad, including the journalist Ruhollah Zam and the activist Jamshid Sharmhad.
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Last Update: Sunday, 13 December 2020 KSA 22:17 – GMT 19:17
