Free Republic

Former Iranian intelligence officer says Tehran ordered downing of plane over Lockerbie in retaliation for US attack on Iranian airliner. Who was responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland? While the Libyan government was thought to have masterminded the terrorist attack, a bombshell documentary by Al Jazeera quotes a former Iranian intelligence officer as saying that it was Iran that ordered the atrocity. The former agent, Abolghassem Mesbahi, who defected to Germany from Iran, is quoted by the Telegraph as saying that flight 103 was downed in retaliation for a US Navy strike on...

A missing Iranian nuclear scientist, who Tehran claims was abducted by the U.S., has taken refuge at a Pakistani embassy office in Washington and is planning to return to his homeland, the State Department said Tuesday. It was the latest development in a murky case that has been shrouded in mystery since the scientist, Shahram Amiri, disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June 2009. "He has been in the United States of his own free will and obviously he is free to go," department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. "In fact, he was scheduled to travel to Iran...

In 2009, Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, traveled to Saudi Arabia, ostensibly to visit Muslim holy sites located in the Kingdom. Once there, he disappeared only to reappear later in some peculiar online rants, claiming to be residing in Virginia and alternatively, in Arizona, and expressing a desire to return to Iran. Amiri, who conducted nuclear research at the military affiliated Malek Ashtar University of Technology and worked for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, was said to possess a treasure trove of classified information on Iran’s illicit nuclear program. On his YouTube channel, he alleged that he was kidnapped by...

Hassan Gol Khanban is thought to have planned his defection in advance of his trip to the United States, taking steps to have his family flee Iran in the hope that they too can gain asylum, his lawyer, Paul O'Dwyer, said. Mr Khanban, who is believed to have worked for the Iranian state broadcaster IRIB for several years, had accompanied Mr Ahmadinejad to New York to attend last week's session of the UN General Assembly. Mr O'Dwyer said that his client's wife and two children had left Iran while he was in New York and that efforts were being made...