Carsten Wiethoff Wrote:The story of the other iranian nuclear scientist mentioned, Shahram Amiri, is also interesting. Obviously french and german services were involved as well as the usual suspects:
(From the Telegraph)
Quote: Shahram Amiri briefed United Nations nuclear monitors in a clandestine meeting at Frankfurt airport just hours before they flew to Iran to inspect a hidden uranium enrichment plant, according to French intelligence sources.
An award-winning atomic physicist, Mr Amiri had worked at the heavily-guarded underground site at Qom. He was attached to a Tehran university named by the EU last year as part of the regime's nuclear-proliferation operations.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was told of the existence of the Qom facility by the US and its European allies in September. But the meeting with Mr Amiri in October would have provided inspectors with key insider knowledge before they made the sensitive trip.
The scientist is the focus of an extraordinary international row stretching from the Gulf to Washington after Iran last week accused Saudi Arabia and the US of "terrorist behaviour" for allegedly colluding in his abduction.
The nuclear scientist, who is in his 30s, disappeared after arriving in in Saudi Arabia for a pilgrimage in late May, leaving behind his wife and extended family. The Saudi authorities say they do not know where he is.
But contrary to Iranian claims, Mr Amiri actually defected after an elaborate international cloak-and-dagger co-ordinated by the CIA, according to a well-connected French intelligence analysis website.
"The agency made contact with the scientist last year when Amiri visited Frankfurt in connection with his research work," Intelligence Online reported. "A German businessman acted as go-between. A final contact was made in Vienna when Amiri travelled to Austria to assist the Iranian representative at the IAEA. Shortly afterwards, the scientist went on pilgrimage to Mecca and hasn't been seen since."
The vanishing act was reminiscent of Cold War days between the Soviet Union and the West when spies - often scientists and diplomats - were spirited away in plots just as outlandish as any John le Carré thriller.
Heads have rolled at Iran's nuclear counter-espionage agency since his loss, and the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, raised his case in a private meeting with the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon.
The Islamic republic has now linked the fate of three American hikers detained in Iran since July with a list of Iranian citizens, including Mr Amiri, who Tehran alleges are being held by the US. It appears to be proposing some form of trade in talks with Swiss intermediaries.
Officially, the US says it has no information on Mr Amiri's whereabouts, but the scientist is now believed to be in Europe, protected by a Western intelligence agency, in a CIA-led operation. He will be debriefed intensively by experts - who will also want to ensure that he is not an Iranian plant.
Four months after Mr Amiri disappeared, President Barack Obama, flanked by Gordon Brown and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, disclosed that Iran had built the buried uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom.
Western intelligence had developed information about the site over threee years.
But Mr Amiri's intelligence about its inner workings - and especially security procedures - proved "extremely useful", a source close to France's overseas secret service, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), told The Sunday Telegraph.
"Amiri has first hand knowledge of the site and this would have been the main subject of discussion," the source said. "The meeting was so secret that the inspectors who met Amiri were unlikely to have even known his name, let alone his background. He was just presented as a bona fide contact in the know about how Qom works."
French agents party to details of the Frankfurt meeting paint a picture of Amiri as one of the brightest young nuclear physicists of his generation, westernised and a good English-speaker.
"He would be an obvious conduit of information," said a source. "Why would the Iranians show four UN inspectors everything unless they knew what to ask for?"
The CIA launched a secret programme, dubbed "the Brain Drain", in 2005 designed to undermine Iran's nuclear programme by persuading key officials to defect. In the biggest previous coup, Revolutionary Guards general Ali Reza Asgari, the deputy defence mnister, vanished on a trip to Turkey in 2007.
Missing Iranian scientist appears at embassy in US
Page last updated at 14:24 GMT, Tuesday, 13 July 2010 15:24 UK
Conflicting videos have deepened the mystery as to Mr Amiri's whereabouts A missing Iranian nuclear scientist, who Tehran says was kidnapped a year ago by the CIA, has taken refuge in the Iran section of Pakistan's US embassy.
A spokesman from Pakistan's Foreign Office, Abdul Basit, told the BBC that Shahram Amiri was seeking immediate repatriation to Iran.
In June videos purportedly of Mr Amiri but containing contradictory information on his whereabouts emerged.
The US rejected Tehran's claims that it was behind Mr Amiri's disappearance.
Iranian media say Mr Amiri worked as a researcher at a university in Tehran, but some reports say he worked for the country's atomic energy organisation and had in-depth knowledge of its controversial nuclear programme.
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Two videos supposedly showing Shahram Amiri emerged on 8 June
ABC News reported in March that he had defected and was helping the CIA, revealing valuable information about the Iranian nuclear programme.
But earlier this month, Tehran said it had proof he was being held in the US.
The allegation came after three videos purportedly of Mr Amiri emerged - the first said he had been kidnapped, the second that he was living freely in Arizona, and the third that he had escaped from his captors.
Diplomatic standoff
The BBC's former correspondent in Tehran, Jon Leyne, says that Iran's version of the story seems to be backed up by events unfolding in Washington DC.
Our correspondent says Mr Amiri's sudden appearance is a major embarrassment for the American spy agencies and could lead to a diplomatic stand-off.
Analysis
Continue reading the main story Jon Leyne,
Former BBC Tehran correspondent
There are two diametrically opposed versions of the Shahram Amiri story. Iran says he was kidnapped. American sources said that he defected and was spilling the beans on the Iranian nuclear programme.
On the face of it, the Iranian version now sounds a lot more credible. However those inclined to give the US the benefit of the doubt will point out that it is still conceivable that Mr Amiri was persuaded, blackmailed, or even conceivably kidnapped by the Iranians themselves back into their hands.
Either way this is a big embarrassment for the American spy agencies, who have let slip a man they had been building up as a major catch.
Profile: Shahram Amiri
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has confirmed reports that Mr Amiri had asked to be repatriated to Iran.
"We hope that, without any obstacle, he can return to his country, that they (the United States), do not create any obstacle for his return to his homeland," Mr Mottaki added.
While US authorities cannot enter Iran's diplomatic premises, they could prevent Mr Amiri leaving.
The Iran interest section is under the protection of Pakistan's embassy in Washington, but housed in a different building and run by Iranians.
The US cut diplomatic relations with Iran shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iranian state radio has reported that Mr Amiri said in a telephone interview from inside the Iranian interest section that he had been "under enormous psychological pressure and supervision of armed agents in the past 14 months".
Mr Amiri was also quoted as saying that the US government had wanted to return him quietly to Iran using another country's airline and in doing so "cover up this abduction".
"After my comments were released on the internet, the Americans realised that they were the losers of this game," he was quoted as having said.
Video claims
A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Reuters news agency that Mr Amiri had been visiting the US and had decided "to return to Iran of his own free will".
Mr Amiri went missing a year ago while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
The first two videos, telling starkly contradictory stories, were posted on the video-sharing site YouTube on 8 June.
In the first, initially broadcast by Iranian television, a man purporting to be Mr Amiri says he was kidnapped by the US while on pilgrimage in the Saudi Arabian city of Medina and that he is now living in the US state of Arizona.
At the time the Iranian government described the video as evidence that he was being held in the US against his will.
In the second, posted hours later on YouTube, a similar-looking man claiming to be the scientist says he is happy in the US, living in freedom and safety.
Plea for help
In the third video, which was broadcast by Iranian state TV on 29 June, a man claiming to be the missing scientist says: "I, Shahram Amiri, am a national of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a few minutes ago I succeeded in escaping US security agents in Virginia.
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In the most recent video the man claims to have escaped US custody
"Presently, I am producing this video in a safe place. I could be rearrested at any time."
The man in the video also dismisses the second recording, in which it was claimed that the scientist was living freely in the US, as "a complete fabrication".
"I am not free here and I am not permitted to contact my family. If something happens and I do not return home alive, the US government will be responsible."
The video finishes with the man urging Iranian officials and human rights organisations to "put pressure on the US government for my release and return".
"I was not prepared to betray my country under any kind of threats or bribery by the US government," he adds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_...609461.stm