Turkey has arrested 11 people suspected of working with Iran to abduct an Iranian opposition figure in Istanbul and smuggle him back to Iran.
Prominent Arab dissident Habib Chaab, who for the past 14 years had lived in exile in Sweden, had flown to Turkey in October to meet with a woman, The Washington Post reports. Sources told the outlet that he and the woman, who arrived in Turkey the day before on a fake Iranian passport, arranged to meet at a gas station in Istanbul.
Chaab was then lured into a parked van where he was drugged, tied up and smuggled across the border into Iran from Turkey’s eastern province of Van. Shortly after, Iranian media reported that Chaab was arrested in Iran but didn’t specify the circumstances.
The Post says the 11 men detained in connection with his abduction were all Turkish and arraigned on charges including “using weapons … to deprive an individual of their liberty through deceit.”
Turkey’s state-run TRT reports that the Turkish intelligence service believes that drug trafficker Naji Sharifi Zindasti was involved in Chaab’s abduction and is still at large. Zindasti has lived in Turkey since Iran sentenced him to death in 2007, and analysts told the outlet Iran may have given Zindasti a pardon in exchange for handing over Chaab.
