The family of Mohammad Bagher Moradi, an Iranian dissident journalist who took refuge in Turkey in 2013, says he has been abducted by Iranian intelligence operatives in Ankara.
Moradi left his house on May 30, telling his family that he was going to buy bread. He never returned. He did not answer his mobile phone, and his car was found abandoned kilometers from his house.
“My son was a dissident journalist. Iranian intelligence was after him. He was kidnapped by them,” Moradi’s father asserted.
The family has filed a criminal complaint, but an investigation has produced no results so far.
Moradi fled Iran after he was put on trial for his reporting on political and economic developments in the country.
If confirmed, the kidnapping would be the latest in a series of attempted or successful abductions of journalists in recent years by Iranian services.
In October 2019, Iranian operatives lured Ruhollah Zam, the founder of Amad News, from Paris to Iraq and then seized him. He was executed in December 2020.
In July 2021, a US federal court indicted a ring, led by Iranian intelligence officer Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani, for the attempted abductions of New York-based Masih Alinejad, who works for Voice of America Persian, and three Iranians in Canada.
Two months later, the US Government sanctioned Farahani and three other Iranian operatives.
About the same time, Masoud Kazemi, editor of the monthly magazine Sedaye Parsi and a political prisoner for 300 days, said he was being threatened in Turkey by Iranian intelligence services.
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Iranian services have allegedly pursued other kidnappings and killings in Turkey. In February, Turkish intelligence detained 16 Iranian suspects in Istanbul, claiming to have foiled a plan to assassinate Yair Geller, an Israeli businessman living in Istanbul.
In March, Turkish prosecutors sought a 30-year prison sentence for 11 suspects, including an Iranian, charged with a plan to abduct Mehrdad Abdarbashi, an Iranian military pilot
Abdarbashi who asked for asylum in Turkey after refusing to serve in Iran’s military operations propping up Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
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