TEHRAN – Iran has sent to US authorities more documents about the disappearance of a nuclear scientist it says was kidnapped by the CIA, demanding his release, a foreign ministry spokesman said at the weekend.
Shahram Amiri, a university researcher working for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, went missing during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia a year ago and Tehran accused Riyadh of handing him over to the US, which Saudi Arabia has denied.
“The documents about Shahram Amiri’s abduction by the CIA have been delivered to the Swiss embassy as the preservers of America’s interests,” Ramin Mehmanparast said, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA.
The Swiss represent US interests in Tehran, where Washington has no diplomatic mission.
“The serious demand of Shahram Amiri’s family, along with public opinion in Iran, is to hand our countryman over to the embrace of his family and the Iranian society as soon as possible,” Mr Mehmanparast said.
In March, ABC news said Amiri had defected to the US and was helping the CIA. Washington officials have denied he was abducted by US agents. Over the last month, conflicting video evidence has appeared on the internet, showing a man claiming to be Amiri.
In the first video, broadcast on Iranian TV, a man says he was abducted and was being held in the US. He says he was forced to take part in a media interview “to claim that I was an important figure in Iran’s nuclear programme and that I had sought asylum in America of my own free will”. In a second video, a man also purporting to be Amiri says he was actually studying in the US. In a third video, which emerged at the end of June, the man says he has fled from US agents and is in hiding. He rejects the second internet footage as a “a sheer lie”.
Tehran initially refused to acknowledge Amiri’s involvement in Iran’s disputed nuclear programme, which Washington and its allies suspect is being used to develop nuclear weapons.
Washington secured a fourth round of UN sanctions against Iran in June. Earlier on Saturday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the latest round of sanctions against it “pathetic”. Iran says it has numerous citizens in secret detention in the US including a former deputy defence minister.
Iranian media often link three US citizens, arrested near the Iraqi border a year ago and held on suspicion of spying, to the fate of alleged Iranian detainees in the US. Some Iranian politicians have asked the US for a prisoner swap.