Posted on 02/24/2010 1:48:05 PM PST by gandalftb
Abdol Malek Rigi, Iran's most wanted man, was hauled off a jet in handcuffs by four men.
State media said Rigi had been on board a flight from Dubai to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, after visiting a US military base in Afghanistan.
Bishkek airport confirmed that Kyrgyzstan Airways flight QH454 from Dubai had arrived several hours late yesterday after being told to land by Iran.
Iran's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, claimed that Rigi, the leader of the Sunni terror group Jundullah, had been at the US base 24 hours before his arrest.
At a dramatic press conference he flourished a photograph which he said showed Rigi outside the base with two other men, though he gave no details of where the base was, or how or when the photograph was obtained.
Photographs were also shown of an Afghan passport and identity card said to have been given by the Americans to Rigi.
Iran has repeatedly claimed that Jundullah is backed directly by Pakistan but also by Britain, Israel and America.
It has also been alleged by western media that in 2007 CIA provided funding and weapons to Jundullah.
The group's most serious attack, in October last year, killed two generals of the Revolutionary Guard along with more than 40 of their men and tribal chiefs whom they were meeting in a town in Balochistan near the border with Pakistan.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Jundallah is also heavily involved in opium/heroin trafficking.
Reports of connections to Pakistan and CIA are generally true and will be an embarrassment to us.
Iranian agents had been tailing Rigi for months and have documented connectiosn to us.
The capture took place when Iranian plain-clothes agents boarded the plane with Rigi and took the plane over as soon as it left Dubai, forcing it to land in Bandar-Abbas, Iran.
Iranian plain-clothes agents boarded the plane with Rigi and took the plane over as soon as it left Dubai...
Hijacked it in other words.
Kyrgyzstan Airways flight QH454
I doubt that Kyrgyzstan Airways needs double digits to name its flights, let alone 5 alpanumeric ones.
Didn’t we warn him to keep out of the poppy fields?
Maybe it is one of several regionals sharing a scheduling system.
I wish someone would arrest leaders of the other Terrorist Organization called the Islamic Republic (IRI).
A main difference between Rigi and the leaders of the Islamic Republic is that the latter runs the Iranian Nation (an entire country). And, never fails to arrest, murder, torture and rape its own “Shia” citizens, even for peaceful protests.
BTW, according to IranPressNews (Persian language), Rigi’s brother Abdolhamid Rigi was executed by IRI this morning.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/073295.htm
My guess is that Rigi’s arrest & his brother’s execution can only mean More serious trouble for Mullahs’ regime.
Interesting - that Dubai connection. According to other reports, information about him was leaked from Pakistan. Iranian intelligence agencies seem to have scored a rare win, on this one.
The media did not fully explain that the flight is Flight 454 Kyrgyzstan Airlines. QH is the current IATA airline designator for Kyrgyzstan Airlines.
Rigi was a cross-border threat that promoted rebellion in the Baloch areas of SW Pakistan also.
This regional action by Pakistani ISI with Iran is indicative of what they could do if the target were Bin Laden or Omar. They wouldn't last 24 hours.
Something fouled up there, Abdolhamid Rigi was hanged in provincial capital city Zahedan last June 6, 2009.
Yes, sort of, we intercepted Iranian Air Traffic Control transmissions, ordering the flight to land. The Iranian agents were there to make sure. Frankly, the Iranian Air Force would have forced it down anyway. They wanted Rigi, he is their highest HVT.
My comment was tounge in cheek. I have actaully been to Bishkek. It is as close to Tatooine as any place I have seen on this planet.
When I was there 10 years ago there were commercial flights about three times a week and you did not want to be on them. We flew in to Almaty in Kazakhstan and drove the 6hrs down to Bishkek.
>>>”Abdolhamid Rigi was hanged in provincial capital city Zahedan last June 6, 2009.”
P.S. - If you do further search you’ll see that the scheduled execution of AbdolHamid Rigi (AbdolMalek Rigi’s brother) on June 6, 2009, apparently, did not take place and was postponed.
There certainly are conflicting reports about AbdolHamid Rigi & his execution. Just as there seem to quite a few conflicting accounts of when, where and how AbdolMalek Rigi was arrested.
______________________________________
“ZAHEDAN, Iran, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Iranian authorities presented a condemned Sunni rebel to reporters on Tuesday who said his group had received support from both the United States and al Qaeda to attack targets inside Iran.
“The statement by Abdolhamid Rigi echoed Iran’s allegations about Jundollah (God’s soldiers), which claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a Shi’ite mosque in May that killed 25 people in the Islamic Republic’s volatile southeast.”
“He is a brother of Jundollah leader Abdolmalek Rigi and his execution was postponed last month when 13 other members of the ethnic Baluch Sunni group were hanged for attacks. Iran, an officially Shi’ite Muslim country, has small Sunni minorities.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLP446118
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=97640§ionid=351020101
“Reports of connections to Pakistan and CIA are generally true and will be an embarrassment to us.”
Really? Where does that information come from?
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