Analysis: A murky assassination that could radically alter Turkish politics

January 30, 2023 by 1 Comment

Sinan Ates Turkey Grey WolvesON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2022, an assailant on a motorcycle opened fire on Sinan Ateş, the leader of Turkey’s most feared paramilitary force, known as the Grey Wolves. By that evening, the 38-year-old Ateş had expired in an Ankara hospital, prompting analysts to forewarn that Turkish politics had entered new and unchartered territory. Indeed, some observers claim that Ateş’ assassination may impact Turkey’s upcoming presidential elections in unpredictable ways. The leading political figures in this strategically important NATO member-state, including its authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are paying close attention.

Turkey’s Far-Right Shock Troops

Known officially as the Idealist Clubs Educational and Cultural Foundation, the Grey Wolves organization is the paramilitary arm of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), a militant political force that occupies most of the far-right space of Turkish politics. The MHP espouses authoritarian and anti-Western views and is violently opposed to negotiations with Turkey’s ethnic minorities, including the Kurds. Its politics appeal to ultra-conservative voters, who are usually male and over the age of 35. The Grey Wolves operate as the MHP’s shock troops, often engaging in bloody street fights against Kurds, leftists, and other popular forces that stand in opposition to the Turkish far-right. Known for their machismo and violent bravado, the Grey Wolves appeal to working-class men in their teens and twenties. In essence, therefore, the MHP and the Grey Wolves are two sides of the same coin.

In 2015, the MHP formed an electoral pact with President Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). The formation of this pact, known as the People’s Alliance, marked the culmination of a long process of informal cooperation between the two sides, which had been going on since at least 2007. The People’s Alliance has been instrumental in preserving the AKP’s domination of Turkish political life in recent years, despite the loss of popularity that President Erdoğan has been experiencing. Currently the AKP relies directly on the MHP’s parliamentary support to rule Turkey with a minority government. The Grey Wolves, which tend to be more unruly than their parent organization, are nominally in support of Erdoğan, but tend to see him as too mellow and not sufficiently authoritarian.

The Fragmentation of the MHP

The MPH likes to project itself as a unified militant organization. In reality, it has always been the product of an uneasy alliance between disparate far-right groups. Its membership ranges from social conservatives to ultranationalists, Hanafi (Sunni) puritans and even neo-fascists. In 2017, when the MHP and the AKP formed the People’s Alliance, several of these groups voiced serious misgivings about aligning themselves with Erdoğan. Eventually, a vocal faction of pro-Western and secularist conservatives left the party over concerns that the MHP would be completely absorbed by the pro-Islamist and anti-Western AKP. Read more of this post

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CIA helped Ukraine foil two Russian plots on Zelenskyy’s life, new book claims

January 17, 2023 by 9 Comments

Volodymyr ZelenskyINFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE United States Central Intelligence Agency helped Kyiv foil two Russian plots against the life of Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the crucial early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian war, according to a new book. The claim is made in The Fight of His Life – Inside Joe Biden’s White House (Scribner) by Chris Whipple, the longtime investigative writer behind several books on American intelligence —most recently The Spymasters How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future (2021, also by Scribner). Whipple’s latest book is scheduled for release today.

Throughout late 2021 and early 2022, the government of President Zelenskyy repeatedly dismissed American warnings, which came as early as November 2021, that Moscow was preparing to launch an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. Zelenskyy himself urged Washington to temper its public warnings about a possible war, because they were creating an atmosphere of panic in Ukrainian business circles. In his public statements, the Ukrainian leader insisted that Kyiv had a long history of facing —and staying calm in the face of— Russian threats against his country.

All that changed in January of 2022, just weeks before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. According to Whipple, Zelenskyy received a secret visit by CIA director William Burns. The two men met in Zelenskyy’s office in Kyiv, where Burns told the Ukrainian leader that he had been authorized by United States President Joe Biden to share with him “precise details of […] Russian pots”. According to Whipple, these plots were not only against Ukraine, but were aimed at Zelenskyy himself. This information, Whipple claims, “immediately got Zelenskyy’s attention; he was taken aback, sobered by this news”. Whipple suggests that the information Burns shared with Zelenskyy was specific enough to surprise and alarm the Ukrainian president. According to Whipple, the CIA’s information about the Kremlin’s assassination plots was “so detailed, that it would help Zelenskyy’s security forces thwart two separate […] attempts on his life” by Russian Special Forces.

The author further claims that the CIA also shared with Ukraine a precise “blueprint of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s invasion plan”. The intelligence given to Ukraine by the CIA included the Kremlin’s plans to attack the Antonov International Airport (also known as Hostomel Airport) northwest of Kyiv. The intelligence contributed substantially to Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Antonov Airport, which took place on February 24 and 25. Ukrainian forces were successful in repelling a Russian air assault on the airport, thus keeping the airstrip under Ukrainian control during the crucial opening stages of the war. That success is often credited with preventing Russian forces from using the Antonov Airport as a strategically important staging location from which to entering and sack Kyiv in February of 2022.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 17 January 2023 | Permalink

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Probing the intelligence failure behind the assassination of Israeli PM Yitzchak Rabin

November 23, 2022 by 3 Comments

Rabin ArafatLAST WEEK, THE CHAIRMAN of the Israeli Religious Zionist Party, Bezalel Smotrich, who will soon be appointed as a cabinet minister, alleged that the Israel Security Agency (ISA) encouraged the killer of the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. Smotrich’s allegation shocked many Israelis, because of the unfortunate timing —it was uttered close to the annual Remembrance Day for Prime Minister Rabin, who was assassinated by radical rightwing activist Yigal Amir 27 years ago. But also because of the unacceptable content, which echoes conspiracy theories that have accompanied Rabin’s assassination for many years. To counter these conspiracy theories, it is fitting to discuss the failure to defend Rabin that did occur under the responsibility of the ISA.

The failure that caused Rabin’s assassination was investigated by a National Inquiry Commission (known as the Shamgar Commission), which found the ISA responsible. In fact, it was deemed a double failure: the first by the personnel of the VIP Security Unit of the ISA, and the second by the intelligence personnel of the ISA, whose job it was to thwart in advance murderous intentions by extreme rightwing elements in Israel. The intelligence failure was not investigated in depth by the Shamgar Committee. It dealt mainly with the security failure and only partially with the intelligence failure. Its investigation focused on the activities of ISA agent Avishi Raviv (code name CHAMPAGNE) who was tasked by the ISA to infiltrate extreme rightwing groups. The Committee did not ask: could the ISA’s intelligence have prevented the murder?

It is also possible to ask: why was the mandate of the Shamgar Committee limited to investigating the area of security, and not intelligence? And why did its members refrain from extending their investigation to the issue of the intelligence failure? There are no answers to this question, even in the autobiographical book of the Committee’s chairman, the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Meir Shamgar.

A Key Piece of Intelligence

Smotrich referred to agent Raviv, who was indeed run in a deficient and unprofessional manner. Yet no malicious intentions can be attributed to the ISA. In any case, Raviv’s defense attorney convinced the court that Raviv did not know about the assassin’s intentions before the murder. The key piece of intelligence, which the ISA had received six months before Rabin’s murder, regarding Amir’s intentions, was handled extremely poorly: an asset of the IDF Central Command’s intelligence department told his commander that he had heard “a small, rotund and armed Yemeni” speaking at a bus stop about his intention to assassinate Rabin. The intelligence was immediately passed on to the head of the appropriate department in the ISA. Unfortunately, however, instead of the source being interrogated by trained ISA personnel, a police investigation was conducted that did not reveal any significant additional information. Read more of this post

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Tip by Belgian spy agency helped US foil Islamic State plot to kill George Bush

September 19, 2022 by 2 Comments

George W. BushA TIP BY BELGIAN intelligence helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation foil a plot by Iraqi nationals to kill former United States President George W. Bush. American news outlets reported in May of this year that the FBI had prevented a scheme by an Iraqi national to smuggle Islamic State operatives into the United States, with the aim of killing the former president. Soon afterwards, the Department of Justice announced that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force had arrested Ahmed Shihab, an Iraqi national, who was the alleged mastermind of the operation.

Shihab, 52, had applied for political asylum in the United States. However, he had reportedly joined the Islamic State in secret, and had devised a scheme to kill Bush during a speech that the former president had been scheduled to deliver in Dallas, Texas. For several weeks, Shihab had allegedly surveilled Bush’s Texas homes in Dallas and Crawford, capturing footage in cellphones and video cameras. Shihab had the support of thee other alleged Islamic State supporters, who had traveled to the United States from Iraq through Denmark, Egypt and Turkey.

In a report that aired late last week, Belgium’s Flemish-language state broadcaster VRT, said that the plan to kill Bush had been foiled thanks to a tip shared with the United States by Belgian intelligence. Specifically, the information was reportedly shared by the State Security Service (VSSE), Belgium’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism agency. According to the VRT, the VSSE gave actionable intelligence about Shihab to the United States Secret Service, which then worked with the FBI to foil the alleged plot. The VRT report suggests that the VSSE was able to collect the intelligence through its systematic monitoring of Belgian Islamists, who fought in the Middle East between 2014 and 2016, before eventually making their way back to Belgium.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 19 September 2022 | Permalink

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Many see Israel behind May 22 killing of Iranian paramilitary leader in Tehran

May 25, 2022 by 2 Comments

IRGC IranA GROWING NUMBER OF security observers point to Israel as the most likely culprit behind the assassination of a leading member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s powerful paramilitary force. Brigadier General Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, who was killed in broad daylight in Tehran on May 22, served as deputy director of the Quds Force, a major branch of the IRGC. The mission of the Quds Force is to carry out unconventional warfare, especially in support of IRGC operations against adversaries abroad.

Observers regularly describe the IRGC as a ‘praetorian guard’ that operates inside Iran’s governing apparatus. Today the IRGC is a military force with a command structure that is distinct from Iran’s regular Armed Forces. It maintains its own army, navy and air force, has its own paramilitary and political protection units, and oversees Iran’s nuclear program. The IRGC’s weapons development falls under the duties of the Quds Force, in which Khodaei was a leading figure. He was also known to have been closely mentored by IRGC Commander Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States in 2020.

Kodaei was assassinated in broad daylight on May 22, as he was heading home from his office in downtown Tehran, located a few blocks from the main building of Iran’s Consultative Assembly. According to eyewitness reports, Kodaei’s vehicle was rapidly approached by two individuals riding on a motorbike. They sped away seconds after shooting Kodaei five times, killing him almost instantly. The entrance to the street where Kodaei was attacked was allegedly blocked by a white van, which also sped away following the shooting.

Israel is known for carrying out assassinations of Iranian officials using motorbikes, which can move with relative ease in the congested streets of Tehran. IntelNews regulars will recall that Israeli intelligence claimed last month to have detained and interrogated an alleged Iranian assassin named Mansour Rasouli. A video of his alleged testimony emerged, which was reportedly filmed at a Mossad safehouse somewhere in Iran. Meanwhile, Kodaei’s assassins remain at large.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 25 May 2022 | Permalink

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Mossad allegedly uncovered Iranian plot to kill Israeli, American officials abroad

May 2, 2022 by 1 Comment

Israeli consulate Istanbul TurkeyISRAEL’S MOSSAD INTELLIGENCE AGENCY allegedly foiled a plot by Iranian intelligence to send assassins abroad and kill an Israeli diplomat, an American military official and a French reporter, according to reports. The information about the alleged plot first surfaced late last week in the Iran International News Channel, a British-based Iranian news agency, which is opposed to the government in Tehran. The news agency claimed that the plot had been organized by the Quds Force, the paramilitary wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Shortly after news of the alleged plot emerged, Israeli media reported the existence of a video of an Iranian man who identifies himself as Mansour Rasouli (or Rassouli). In the video, the man claims to be a member of Unit 840, the part of the Quds Force that plans and executes operations overseas. He also claims that he was paid $150,000 to plan the assassination of an Israeli consular official in Istanbul, Turkey, as well as an American military general stationed in Turkey. A third target for assassination was a Jewish French journalist. The names of the alleged targets are not known. He adds that he had planned to carry out the assassinations with the use of networks of drug smugglers.

Rasouli then claims that the Quds Force had promised to pay him an additional $1 million following the successful conclusion of the assassinations. Toward the end of his statement, Rasouli says he had made an “error of judgment” in agreeing to participate in the operation, and promises to refrain from targeting individuals for assassination in the future. According to Iran International, Rasouli’s interview was filmed by officers of the Mossad in Turkey, where he was allegedly captured before he was able to execute the first of the planned assassinations. However, Israeli media later claimed that the Mossad officers filmed the interview in Iran, during a covert operation that resulted in the capture and interrogation of Rasouli.

IntelNews readers will recall that, in October of last year, Israel accused Iran of being behind a plot to kill Israeli citizens in Cyprus. The accusation came after the arrest of an Azeri national, who was reportedly found carrying a gun fitted with a silencer in the Cypriot capital Nicosia. A year earlier, it was reported that American intelligence agencies had uncovered an Iranian plot to kill the United States’ ambassador to South Africa, in an effort to avenge the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani by the United States in January of 2020.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 02 May 2022 | Permalink

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Ukrainian forces allegedly foiled plan by Chechen paramilitaries to kill president

March 3, 2022 by 1 Comment

Russia UkraineA PLOT BY A notorious Chechen paramilitary group to assassinate the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was foiled by Ukrainian forces, according to a Ukrainian government official. The claim was made on Tuesday by Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications, a government-linked enterprise that works closely with the country’s Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The source of the allegation is Oleksiy Danilov, chair of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council—which is believed to be closely linked with the Center for Strategic Communications. Danilov said on Tuesday that members of the Kadyrovtsy (known in English as Kadyrovites), a Chechen paramilitary regiment, had been dispatched to Ukraine in order to “eliminate” Zelensky.

The Kadyrovites are rooted in the Chechen separatist movement of the 1990s, when Chechen militants fought against the Russian military. But a sizeable group of Chechen fighters entered the conflict on behalf of the Russian state when their leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, took Moscow’s side during the Second Chechen War. Today they operate as a personal protection squadron for Kadyrov’s son, Ramzan Kadyrov, who rules Chechnya on behalf of the Kremlin. Occasionally the Kadyrovites have been participated in foreign missions on behalf of Moscow, notably in Syria in 2017 and 2018.

Danilov said the assassins had attempted to approach Kiev from the northwest, separated in two groups. One of the groups was allegedly “destroyed” in the town of Hostomel, which borders the northwest suburbs of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Another group had come “under fire” in Kiev, Danilov claimed. It is worth noting that, according to Danilov, Ukrainian forces “received information” about the alleged assassination plot by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service —Russia’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism agency— who “do not want to take part in this bloody war”.

Earlier this week, British newspaper The Times reported that 400 Russian paramilitaries belonging to the Wagner Group were heading to Kiev in order to assassinate Zelensky. Wagner, a secretive security firm believed to operate on behalf of Russian military intelligence, first appeared in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Since then, the company has operated around the world as a private paramilitary entity. Its mission is allegedly to afford the Kremlin “plausible deniability” capabilities for operations in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 03 March 2022 | Permalink

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Ukrainian leader Zelensky says Russian assassins are in Kiev with orders to kill him

February 25, 2022 by Leave a comment

Volodymyr ZelenskyTHE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE, Volodymyr Zelensky, warned on Thursday that teams or Russian assassins have already entered the nation’s capital, Kiev, with orders to kill him and his family. Zelensky made this statement during a late-night address to the nation from an undisclosed location, presumably in Kiev. Referring to “enemy sabotage groups”, he said they had already “entered Kiev” and were seeking to “destroy Ukraine politically by destroying [its] head of state”.

Zelensky referred to “information we have”, according to which he had been “marked by the enemy as the number one target” and his family as “the number two target”. The statement was an apparent reference to an alleged “kill/capture list” that Moscow plans to put to use in Ukraine. As intelNews explained last week, United States officials have said that the purpose of the alleged list is two-fold: first, to minimize popular resistance by Ukrainians to an invading Russian army; and, second, to destabilize the government in Kiev, so that a pro-Russian government can eventually replace it.

According to the United States government, the list contains the names of senior Ukrainian politicians, Ukraine-based critics of the Russian and Belarusian governments, as well as journalists and other activists. According to Washington, the alleged list is maintained by the foreign intelligence arm of the Russia’s Federal Security Service—known as the Service for Operational Information and International Communications—or the Fifth Service, in short. The Fifth Service is political action of a covert nature, which is aimed at electoral subversion, political influence campaigns, psychological operations, and the undermining of groups or movements that Russia perceives as adversarial.

On Thursday, Foreign Policy’s national security and intelligence reporter Amy MacKinnon told SpyTalk’s Jeff Stein and Jeanne Meserve that the existence “kill/capture” list seemed credible, when one considers the Kremlin’s long history of assassination operations. MacKinnon was the first reporter to write about the alleged list. She told SpyTalk that it was part of a “campaign of arrests and assassinations”, which Moscow aimed to carry out on Ukrainian soil. She added that, although the names of potential victims have not been revealed, the list is “quite detailed and relatively extensive”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 25 February 2022 | Permalink

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Israeli ex-intelligence chief claims Israel had role in top Iranian general’s killing

December 22, 2021 by Leave a comment

Qasem SoleimaniTHE RECENTLY RETIRED DIRECTOR of Israel’s military intelligence agency has claimed in an interview that Israel had a role in the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who led Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Soleimani was arguably Iran’s most revered military official. He was killed by an American targeted drone strike on January 3, 2020, in Baghdad, Iraq. The same missile strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who commanded the Popular Mobilization Committee, an umbrella organization composed of around 40 pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. The then-American president, Donald Trump, claimed responsibility for the attack.

In the months that followed Soleimani’s assassination, Iranian state media claimed that the operation that targeted the IRGC had been aided with intelligence and logistical support by the governments of several countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Kuwait and Lebanon. Meanwhile, reports by Western media alleged that “[i]ntelligence from Israel helped confirm the details” of Soleimani’s whereabouts shortly before he was assassinated. There has been no independent confirmation of these claims.

Now, however, it appears that a recently retired Israeli general, who headed the country’s military intelligence agency during Soleimani’s assassination, has claimed partial responsibility for his killing. According to the Associated Press, Major General Tamir Heyman, who until October of this year headed the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate, has become “the first official to confirm Israel’s involvement” in the controversial assassination.

Heyman is believed to have given an interview in late September to Mabalat Malam, the Hebrew-language magazine of the Israeli Intelligence Heritage Center, which is seen as closely affiliated with the Israeli intelligence community. In the interview, which is available in the current issue of the magazine, Heyman says that “Assassinating Soleimani was an achievement, since our main enemy, in my eyes, are the Iranians”. He adds that Soleimani’s killing was one of “two significant and important assassinations during my term” as head of army intelligence.

The Associated Press is among a number of news agencies that reached out to the IDF for clarification about Heyman’s comments. As of Tuesday night, the IDF had not responded to several requests for comment.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 December 2021 | Permalink

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Turkey launches investigation after explosive found under Erdoğan guardsman’s car

December 6, 2021 by 1 Comment

Nusaybin TurkeyTURKISH AUTHORITIES HAVE LAUNCHED an investigation after a makeshift explosive device was found under the car of a police officer guarding an open-air speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The rally took place on Saturday in Siirt, a Kurdish-majority town located about 90 miles from the Turkish-Syrian border. The town has a symbolic significance for Erdoğan, as it is the hometown of his wife, Emine Erdoğan, and was his constituency for four years. In 2003 he won a by-election there and entered the Turkish Grand National Assembly as a member.

According to pro-government Turkish media, the makeshift bomb was affixed to the undercarriage of a private car. The car belongs to a police officer in the city of Nusaybin (pictured), in the province of Mardin, which is situated on the Turkish-Syrian border. The explosive device was detected by a bomb squad on Saturday morning, as the police officer was preparing to depart for Siirt, where he was going to help secure an outdoor rally by Erdoğan. The purpose of the rally was to gather support for the embattled Erdoğan, as the Turkish economy is undergoing its most serious recession in a generation.

Turkish media said that a specialist bomb squad was dispatched to Nusaybin upon the discovery of the device, and defused it “in a controlled manner”. Later that day, Erdoğan began his speech at the rally in Siirt by mentioning the discovery of the device, saying that the “defeats suffered by the terrorists” were bound to prompt “confessions of treachery and meanness”, which will be “revealed in time”. Southeastern Turkey, where Siirt is located, is a stronghold of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed secessionist group that Turkey has been battling for nearly 40 years.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 06 December 2021 | Permalink

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European report claims Russia has retained Soviet-era assassination capabilities

December 2, 2021 by 3 Comments

Gävle Sweden

A REPORT FROM A European intelligence agency claims that the Russian state has retained the same capacity for worldwide extrajudicial executions that it had during the Soviet era. The report was disclosed by a Swedish broadcaster in association with the attempted murder of Tumso Abdurakhmanov, a blogger from the Russian province of Chechnya, who is a vocal critic of the Russian government and the Kremlin-backed governor of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Originally from the Chechen capital Grozny, Abdurakhmanov, 34, lives in Sweden, from where he regularly posts videos on YouTube criticizing Kadyrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin. His YouTube channel has over 250,000 followers. In 2020, a man who traveled to Sweden from Moscow, entered Abdurakhmanov’s apartment in Gävle, Sweden, and tried to kill him with a hammer. It appears that the man was let into Abdurakhmanov’s apartment by a woman with whom Abdurakhmanov had a relationship at the time, and is now believed to have been an accomplice of the would-be-assassin.

Abdurakhmanov survived the attack. The attacker, Ruslan Mamaev, is now serving a 12-year prison sentence, while the woman, Elmira Chapiaeva, is serving an 18-month sentence. Swedish authorities say they are looking for third person, who is believed to have been the would-be-assassins’ logistical link to the Chechen government, and remains at large. According to the Swedish Security Service, known as SÄPO, the operation to kill Abdurakhmanov was organized in Moscow in 2019.

In association with Abdurakhmanov’s attempted assassination, the Swedish broadcaster SVT published yesterday excerpts from an intelligence report, which offers a broad assessment of the Kremlin’s capabilities for extrajudicial killings around the world. According to the SVT, the report was produced by an unnamed “European intelligence agency”. It claims that many of the “instigators, planners, coordinators and operatives of [Russian-organized] extrajudicial killings are usually found in the special units [spetsnaz] of the National Guard of the Russian Federation”. This is primarily the case with spetsnaz units based in Chechnya, according to the report.

The conclusion of the report is that Russia “today has the same capacity as the Soviet Union once had to conduct assassination operations sanctioned by the state” around the world. The Kremlin has used this capability to carry out numerous assassinations and attempted assassinations of dissident expatriates, defectors, and other critics of the Russian government in Europe and beyond, the report concludes.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 02 December 2021 | Permalink

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Norway charges former Iranian diplomat in 1993 assassination attempt

November 15, 2021 by Leave a comment

William NygaardTHE GOVERNMENT OF NORWAY has pressed charges against two men, among them a former diplomat in the Iranian embassy in Oslo, for the attempted murder of a high-profile Norwegian publisher in 1993. The case centers on an attempt against the life of William Nygaard, a Norwegian publisher and former director of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.

In 1989 Nygaard was behind the publication of the Norwegian edition of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. The bestselling novel was condemned as blasphemous by conservative Muslims, due to its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. In the spring of 1989, Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (decree) sentencing to death the novel’s author and all those who had a role in publishing the book, and urging followers of Islam to execute them at will. Nygaard began receiving threats almost immediately, and was given police protection for almost a year.

On the morning of October 11, 1993, Nygaard was shot and left for dead outside his house in the northern outskirts of Oslo. He survived after being rushed to the hospital, where he remained for several months during what became a long and painstaking period of recovery. The police was unable to find the culprits of the attempted murder, and the investigation stalled after a few years, as it was unclear whether the motives were political or personal. Nygaard consistently argued that the attempt on his life was politically motivated.

Nygaard’s claims were revived in 2018, when the Norwegian Police Service said it had pressed charges against two individuals for the attempted murder of the publisher. No information was publicized about the identities of the two suspects. However, a clue emerged when a spokeswoman for Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service said that the incident “was about more than an attack on one man” and represented “a violent attempt to shut down free speech”.

Since then there have been rumors about the identities of the two suspects. Last week, Iranian dissidents living abroad began claiming that one of the men was a Lebanese national, and the other a retired Iranian diplomat. On Friday, a report by the Norwegian Broadcasting Company stated that the Iranian former diplomat in question is Mohammad Nik-Khah. The report added that Nik-Khah served as first secretary of the Iranian embassy in Norway when Nygaard was shot, and that he now lives in Iran.

Over the weekend, a press statement issued by the Iranian embassy in Oslo confirmed that Nik-Khah served as a diplomat there in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the statement claimed that Nik-Khah had left Norway several days prior to the attempted killing of Nygaard.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 15 November 2021 | Research credit: LCP | Permalink

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Turkey announces arrest of Russian and Israeli alleged spies following crackdown

October 22, 2021 by Leave a comment

MIT Turkey

THE GOVERNMENT OF TURKEY has announced the arrest of 21 individuals, among them foreign citizens, whom it accuses of “political and military espionage” on behalf of Israel, and of planning assassinations ordered by Russia. Turkish authorities released separately two statements on Thursday, announcing the arrests of alleged spies for Israel and Russia respectively. The two sets of arrests do not appear to be connected, despite the fact that they were announced on the same day.

Six alleged assassins operating under Russian command were arrested on October 8 in Antalya, a tourist resort located on Turkey’s southern coast. Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) said the group includes four Russians, a Ukrainian and an Uzbek. They allegedly planned to kill a number of Chechen separatists who live in Turkey. In preparation of the alleged assassinations, group members “were in the process of obtaining weapons”, according to Turkish government prosecutors.

A court in Istanbul has reportedly ruled that the members of the alleged assassination team should remain behind bars, pending a trial for espionage. Meanwhile the a Russian government spokesman said on Thursday that the Kremlin was “not aware” of any Russian citizens having been arrested on espionage charges in Turkey, adding that the Russian embassy in Ankara had not been informed of any such arrests.

Meanwhile, in a separate announcement issued on Thursday, the MİT disclosed the arrests of 15 members of an alleged spy ring for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Turkish media reports said the 15 individuals had been arrested in a series of raids that took place across four Turkish provinces on October 7, following a year-long counterintelligence operation. Turkish authorities claim that the spy ring monitored the activities of Palestinians living in Turkey and provided the information to the Mossad, in return “for tens of thousands of dollars and euros”. The Israeli government has not commented on these reports.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 October 2021 | Permalink

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Iran denies murder plot after alleged assassin caught with gun and silencer in Cyprus

October 5, 2021 by 2 Comments

Nicosia Cyprus

ISRAEL HAS ACCUSED IRAN of being behind a plot to kill Israeli citizens in the Republic of Cyprus, following the arrest of a man who was reportedly found carrying a gun fitted with a silencer in the Cypriot capital Nicosia. The man reportedly entered Cyprus on a flight that landed at Larnaca International Airport last week. He is believed to be a 38-year-old Azeri national, who allegedly entered Cyprus using a Russian passport.

Cypriot police kept tabs on the suspected assassin as soon as he entered Cyprus, according to reports. IntelNews hears that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad may have been behind a tip given to the Cypriots about the man’s presence on the island. In the days following his arrival, the suspect crossed several times into the Turkish-occupied northern region of Cyprus, using his Russian passport and “trying to keep a low profile”, according to Israeli media reports.

The Azeri man was eventually arrested in Nicosia, shortly after entering from northern Cyprus at the Agios Dometios checkpoint. Some local news reports suggest that he was found to be carrying a gun fitted with a silencer, and that he was planning to target a number of prominent Israeli business people who live on the island. Reports in Israel claim that the alleged assassin’s primary target was Teddy Sagi, an Israeli investor who owns online gambling platforms, as well as properties in the United Kingdom and Cyprus. He is believed to be among Israel’s richest citizens.

Iran has vehemently denied Israel’s claim that Cypriot police averted “an act of terror [that] was orchestrated by Iran against Israeli business people” in Cyprus. However, the Israeli government’s announcement did not go into details, while Israeli officials refused to confirm that Teddy Sagi was the target of the alleged operation.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 05 October 2021 | Permalink

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Israel killed Iranian nuclear scientist using advanced robotic device, report claims

September 20, 2021 by Leave a comment

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh

ISRAEL’S PRIMARY EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE agency, the Mossad, assassinated the lead military scientist behind Iran’s nuclear program using a remote-controlled robot, according to a new report. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s elite paramilitary force. He was assassinated along with his wife on November 27, 2020, in an armed assault that took place in the eastern outskirts of Tehran. The attack, which lasted no more than 3 minutes, took place in broad daylight. No arrests have been made in connection with the killings.

Shortly after Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, Iranian authorities claimed that the Mossad had orchestrated his killing, and Iranian media carried reports about the alleged identities of the killers. But in February of this year, the London-based weekly newspaper The Jewish Chronicle claimed that the Mossad had killed the IRGC general using a “one-ton remote-controlled gun smuggled into Iran piece by piece over eight months”. There has been no confirmation of that report, and the details behind Fakhrizadeh’s killing remain vague.

On Saturday, however, an article by The New York Times’ Ronen Bergman and Farnaz Fassihi supported the view that the Fakhrizadeh was killed by a remote-controlled advanced robotic device. According to the new report, the apparatus had been fitted by Mossad operatives into the bed of a blue Zamyad, a popular Iranian-built Nissan pickup truck model. A Belgian-made FN MAG 7.62-mm machine gun was hidden beneath decoy construction material and a heavy tarpaulin, said the article. It repeated the The Jewish Chronicle’s claim that the device had been smuggled into Iran by Mossad operatives in pieces, over an extensive period of time.

According to Bergman and Fassihi, Fakhrizadeh’s assassins operated remotely, and there was no Mossad hit squad on the ground in Tehran when the assassination occurred. In fact, the Mossad team that installed the advanced robotic apparatus “had already left Iran” by the time the trigger was pulled. Artificial intelligence was employed to ensure that the remote sniper’s actions were successful. However, the explosives that were meant to destroy the apparatus following Fakhrizadeh’s assassination partly malfunctioned, thus allowing the Iranians to access the partly damaged vehicle, machine gun and control mechanism, said the Times.

In an article published late on Saturday, Israeli English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post said it was in a position to “confirm the accuracy of the Times report.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 20 September 2021 | Permalink

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