Professor of nuclear physics killed in bomb blast in Tehran

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Iranian Scientist Reported Flying Home

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: July 14, 2010





WASHINGTON — An Iranian nuclear scientist who American officials say defected to the United States last year, provided information about Iran’s nuclear weapons program and then developed second thoughts, was reported to be flying home on Wednesday after he walked into the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani Embassy here on Monday night, saying he wanted a ticket back to Tehran.
On Wednesday, Iranian state media reported, his wish was granted. The scientist, Shahram Amiri, “has left the United States for the Iranian capital, Tehran,” Press TV, a state-run satellite broadcaster, reported, without giving details of his itinerary. Without giving details, the official IRNA news agency quoted an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying he was “heading toward Iran through a third country.”
The bizarre episode was the latest in a tale that has featured a mysterious disappearance from a hotel room in Saudi Arabia, rumors of a trove of new intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities and a series of contradictory YouTube videos. It immediately set off a renewed propaganda war between Iran and the United States.
Iranian officials have said for months that Amiri, 32, was kidnapped in the spring of 2009, taken to the United States and imprisoned and tortured. Iranian media quoted Mr. Amiri on Tuesday as saying that the United States had wanted to quietly return him to Iran and “cover up the kidnapping.”
On Wednesday, Press TV said: “Analysts say U.S. intelligence officials decided to release Amiri after they failed to advance their propaganda campaign against Iran’s nuclear program via fabricating interviews with the Iranian national.”
American intelligence officials scoffed at such accounts. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the first official acknowledgment of Mr. Amiri’s presence in the United States, said Tuesday that he had arrived in the country “of his own free will” and could leave whenever he wished — an indication, she said, that he was hardly a prisoner of the United States government.
But clearly the latest chapter in the saga of Mr. Amiri, a specialist in radiation detection, was an embarrassment to American intelligence agencies and offered a peephole view of what is informally called the “brain drain” program to lure Iranian scientists and engineers out of their country.
Mr. Amiri was described as an important confirming source about the Iranian nuclear program, but he was considered too junior and too removed from the program’s central leadership to have deep knowledge. According to an American intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Mr. Amiri used his expertise in radiation detection to monitor employee safety at many of Iran’s atomic plants and facilities.
The strange saga of Mr. Amiri began when he vanished during a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia 13 months ago. Almost immediately, it was clear that he was in the hands of Western intelligence agencies, and American officials now say that he was spirited quickly to the United States.
Shortly after Mr. Amiri disappeared, the Iranian government protested that he had been kidnapped by the United States, and it asked the United Nations secretary general to arrange for his return.
It is unclear when Mr. Amiri’s debriefings by American intelligence officials ended. But at some point he was placed in the national resettlement program, a sort of witness-protection program for defectors run by the C.I.A., and starting in the spring his nervousness about the fate of his wife and child grew markedly.
A former senior American intelligence official said he believed that the Iranians had threatened Mr. Amiri’s family, and a current American official said “the Iranians are not above using relatives to try to influence people.” Whatever the reason, one evening, looking haggard and unshaven, Mr. Amiri made a video, apparently on his laptop computer.
It showed a young man speaking in Persian through a computer phone hookup and saying that he had been kidnapped in a joint operation involving the C.I.A. and the Saudi intelligence service in Medina, Saudi Arabia, on June 3, 2009. He said that he had been taken to a house and injected with something, and that when he awoke, he was on a plane heading to the United States.
He said he was recording the video on April 5, in Tucson.
But hours later, another video appeared on YouTube, apparently made after the first one, with professional help. Appearing in a well-lighted room that appeared to be a library, with the added touch of a globe and a chessboard, Mr. Amiri looked well groomed. He identified himself as a student in a Ph.D. program and said he was eager to complete his studies and return to his family.
He insisted that he was free and safe, and he demanded an end to what he called false videos about himself, saying he had no interest in politics or experience in any nuclear weapons programs. He then made a third video, similar to the first.
On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton left it unclear why Mr. Amiri made his dramatic appearance at a storefront offshoot of the Pakistani Embassy on Monday evening, seeking refuge, a passport and a plane ticket.

More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/world/...ss&emc=rss