Free Republic

Iran initiated 9/11 attacks’ 22 January 2004 HAMBURG – The Iranian intelligence service was the initiator of the 11 September 2001 suicide-jet attacks on New York and Washington, according to a defector quoted Thursday by German police at the Hamburg terrorist trial.One Federal Crime Office interrogator said he had taken down a statement in Berlin on Monday from a former Iranian agent who insisted that Iran had employed Saudi radical Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to carry out the attacks. The defector could not appear himself in court because he had been promised anonymity, two police officers told the trial...

Both CNN and the Washington Post reported yesterday that the Iranian regime is plotting to kill President Trump. Jewish World Review has posted the Washington Post story in accessible form here. Intelligence concerning the plot derives from a human source and is apparently unrelated to the attempted assassination of Trump over the weekend.NRO’s Jimmy Quinn quotes Rich Goldberg’s tweet on the rationale for such an operation: “Donald Trump is an existential threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regime knows maximum pressure will return.”The incompetence of the Secret Service presents something of a national security crisis. The Post drily...

A wealthy Russian businessman indicted in Boston late last year on hacking and insider trading charges could have access to documents and information about the 2016 election hacking in the U.S. Vladislav Klyushin was extradited to the U.S. from Switzerland late last month and charged with overseeing a multinational scam that pried privileged documents that companies were filing with U.S. regulators before they were public, then trading on the information. Among his employees, and also named in the indictment, is Ivan Yermakov – who was among a dozen Russian military intelligence officers former special counsel Robert Mueller indicted in 2018...

Mzoudi was a liaison to al Qaeda, witness said. A man claiming to be a former Iranian spy testified Friday that Abdelghani Mzoudi, the second man to be tried for an alleged role in the Sept. 11 attacks, was involved in the preparations to hit the World Trade Center. The witness, who goes by the alias Hamid Reza Zakeri, took the stand at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg and claimed that Mzoudi, was "responsible for part of the organization" of the suicide attacks that destroyed the twin towers in New York and damaged the Pentagon. Zakeri testified Mzoudi...

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...