Decoding Iran’s Politics: The History of Iran-Led Extraterritorial Kidnappings

On October 14, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) announced that their agents had arrested Ruhollah Zam, the editor-in-chief of Amad News Telegram channel, in what they described as a “sophisticated” operation. Hours later, Iran’s state-run TV interviewed Zam, who was shown saying he was sorry for his actions against the Iranian regime. 

Zam founded Amad News in 2015 and the channel played an important role in Iran’s January 2018 protests by providing real-time coverage of people going on to the streets to join demonstrations. This channel was also famous for its revelations against Iranian authorities, though the news stories published on the channel tended to be a combination of reliable, exaggerated and fake news. 

Some media, including the BBC, say unnamed sources within the Iraqi government told them that Zam had been arrested by Iraq’s intelligence services in Baghdad and then handed over to Iranian agents. Before his arrest, Ruhollah Zam lived in Paris under the protection of the French police. On October 12, Zam arrived in Baghdad airport, where, according to these Iraqi sources, he was arrested. Further reports said that Islamic Republic agents had deceived Ruhollah Zam to make him travel to Iraq by falsely claiming that he would be able to meet the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the highest-ranking Iraqi Shia cleric. Zam had apparently been very eager to meet the Iran-born ayatollah and he viewed the potential meeting as an important sign that Sistani approved of his activities. 

Ruhollah Zam’s arrest, however, was not the first time that Iranian citizens have been arrested or kidnapped in foreign countries. In fact, prior to Zam’s case, the Islamic Republic intelligence agencies had managed to arrest or kidnap a number of other foreign-based Iranians whom the regime accused of national security or financial crimes, with or without the help of their host countries.  

Security Targets

Over the last four decades, Iranian agents have killed dozens of individuals whom they viewed as threats to the national security of the Islamic Republic. In addition to such operations, a number of individuals have not been killed, but instead kidnapped and transferred into Iran. 

The most famous case was possibly the abduction of Abdulmalek Rigi, the leader of Jundallah, a terrorist group based in the Sistan and Baluchistan province of southeast Iran.  

According to Tehran officials, on February 23, 2010, Rigi was transferred to Iran while onboard a flight from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Islamic Republic authorities say when the plane was crossing the Persian Gulf, Iranian fighter jets intercepted it and forced the pilot to land in Iran’s territory. Four months later, on June 20, 2010, Abdulmalek Rigi was executed in Tehran.

However, according to unofficial reports, the Pakistani intelligence services had provided their Iranian counterparts with intelligence about Rigi’s whereabouts, which finally led to his arrest. Certain American sources have also said that the US had supported Pakistan’s cooperation with Iran over Rigi’s capture. On November 3, 2010, the US State Department designated Jundallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Another example was the case of Forood Fooladvand (whose real name was Fathollah Manouchehri), a London-based monarchist activist and the founder of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran. Fooladvand run a satellite channel, which he used to call for people to overthrow the Islamic Republic by force. In January 2007, Forood Fooladvand traveled to Turkey in order to pass over the country’s border with Iran illegally. Iranian intelligence agents, pretending to be anti-regime activists, had apparently deceived Fooladvand by convincing him that his supporters were ready to join him in Iran to topple the Islamic Republic. 

Fooladvand and his two associates, Alexander Valizadeh and Kourosh Lor, disappeared on the Turkey-Iran border on January, 17, 2007. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, believe they were kidnapped on the border and then transferred to Iran. The fate of Fooladvand, Valizadeh and Lor is still unknown and it is not clear whether they are in prison or have been executed in Iran. 

Fooladvand was not the only Iranian dissident who was believed to have been abducted by Iranian agents or their proxies in Turkey. 

For instance, in October 1987, Abol-Hassan Modjtahed-Zadeh, a member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), was kidnapped in Istanbul. He went missing until October 11, 1988, when he was found in the trunk of a car while attempting to cross the Iranian border. The car had diplomatic plates and the occupants were five Iranian diplomats. It appeared that the Iranian ambassador in Ankara at the time, Manoochehr Mottaki, who later became foreign minister under President Ahmadinejad’s first term, was aware of the operation.

In another incident, Abbas Gholizadeh was kidnaped in Ankara on December 26, 1992, and nine months later his tortured corpse was found in the city. Gholizadeh was an officer in Iran’s pre-revolution army and a member of a monarchist organization named Derafsh-e Kaviani (the Royal Banner). In late January 1994, the leader of Islamic Action, a Turkish fundamentalist group affiliated with Iran, stood trial in Ankara and admitted having received money from Iranian agents in return for handing over Gholizadeh to them for interrogation.  

The Islamic Action group was also responsible for the kidnapping of Ali-Akbar Ghorbani, another MEK member, who was abducted from his home in Istanbul on June 4, 1992. His body was found on June 16, showing obvious signs of torture —his genitals mutilated. In February 1993, a member of the Islamic Action group admitted to abducting Ali-Akbar Ghorbani before handing him over to Iranian agents.

In addition to the kidnapping operations in which Iran’s involvement has been proven, there are also other cases in Turkey where this involvement is suspected, but has not been completely established, although substantial evidence implies involvement. 

The abduction of Ali Kashefpour, a member of the central committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, is one of these cases. Kashefpour was kidnapped from his home in the Turkish city of Konya and his tortured body was found on a roadside ditch on July 15, 1990. The case remains officially unsolved but, due to considerable similarities to the abduction and torture of other Turkey-based dissidents, it is widely believed that Iranian agents or their Turkish associates were responsible for the murder. 

Economic Targets

Over the last 15 years, Islamic Republic’s agents have kidnapped a number of Iranian individuals who were personally accused of fraud and embezzlement, or held sensitive information about the economic fraud of certain Iranian authorities. 

The most extreme case of such abductions concerned Abbas Yazdanpanah Yazdi, a businessman who was accused of bribery to facilitate a huge contract with the Norwegian oil giant Statoil.

He was kidnapped on June 25, 2013. On August 5, officers from the United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard counter-terrorism command informed his London-based wife that Yazdanpanah Yazdi had died during the abduction. The kidnappers reportedly tried to transfer him to Iran from Fujairah, on the UAE’s eastern coast, when his dead body was found, apparently while resisting abduction. On February 26, 2015, the UAE court sentenced six Iranian nationals to life imprisonment on charges of kidnapping Abbas Yazdanpanah Yazdi.

Shahram Jazayeri was possibly the most famous target of Iran-led abductions. Jazayeri, an Iranian businessman, was involved in a number of high-profile corruption cases including bribing Iranian officials and their family members. 

Jazayeri was imprisoned on November 13, 2001. But on February 21, 2007, the judiciary announced that he had escaped while being transferred from his cell to one of the judiciary’s buildings. However, on March 19, 2007 the Ministry of Intelligence announced that Iranian agents had arrested Jazayeri in a foreign country, which was later reported to be Oman. It appeared that the Iranian agents had abducted him in a far-away village, though it was not clear if Oman’s government had collaborated with the operation. However, on October 11, 2014, Jazayeri’s prison term ended and was released from prison.

Finally, apart from the cases in which the level of the local authorities’ involvement is not clear, there are specific examples of offshore arrests that have clearly been made with the help of foreign governments. 

The fate of Farhad Zahedi-Far, who was accused of defrauding thousands of investors in his gold coin trading company, was one of these cases. On September 14, 2018, soon after his name was announced as the main defendant of the fraud case, he fled Iran to Dubai. Then he reportedly left Dubai to Europe and his whereabouts were unknown for a few weeks. But on October 6, 2018, Iranian police announced that Zahedi-Far had been returned to Iran with the help of the police force of the country where he resided. The police statement did not elaborate on the country of the arrest but several Iranian media outlets reported that he had been captured in Turkey. 

Despite the great difference between Farshad Zahedi-Far’s case and that of Rouhollah Zam, it is significant that both of them had apparently been arrested in Iran’s neighboring countries with the cooperation of local authorities. An even more important aspect of these consecutive arrests is that they had been made in a matter of one year — one in September 2018 and the other in October 2019.