A senior Iranian human rights official says the Islamic Republic will soon announce the final verdict in the case of the assassinations of several senior nuclear scientists, which are believed to be tied to the Israeli regime.
“Criminal investigations into the killings of nuclear scientists are high on the agenda of Tehran Prosecutor’s Office. A case has already been filed and others are on the way,” Kazem Gharibabadi, the secretary-general of Iran’s Human Rights Office, said on Sunday, as the country marks the first anniversary of Israel’s assassination of prominent Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Gharibabadi denounced Fakhrizadeh’s killing as a crime against humanity and a violation of international regulations and human rights.
He also censured the silence and inaction of international bodies as well as countries purportedly fighting terrorism vis-à-vis the assassination.
“We expect coordination and cooperation on the part of relevant agencies in order to pursue and investigate these crimes in international courts of law,” Gharibabadi pointed out.
Fakhrizadeh, who headed the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was assassinated on November 27, 2020.
Following the assassination, Iranian officials said that Israel had acted with US intelligence and carried out the targeted killing of the prominent nuclear scientist.
The New York Times reported on September 18 that Israel’s spying agency, Mossad, had used a remote-controlled “killer robot” to kill Fakhrizadeh near his countryside residence in Absard, east of Tehran, last year.
The paper said Israel had kept Fakhrizadeh under surveillance “for at least 14 years,” and to carry out the assassination, the regime used a special model of the Belgian-made FN machine gun that was attached to a robotic instrument and required no on-site operatives.
The report stressed that Israel had been closely following Fakhrizadeh’s career and movements since 2007 and began making preparations for an assassination operation in late 2019 and early 2020, following a series of meetings between Israeli officials led by then-Mossad director Yossi Cohen and high-ranking United States officials, including former US President Donald Trump, ex-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the former CIA director Gina Haspel.
Over the past years, Iranian nuclear scientists have been the target of the Western and Israeli spy agencies’ assassination attempts.
Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists — namely Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan — were assassinated, while another, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder
In June 2012, Iran announced that its intelligence forces had identified and arrested all terrorist elements behind the assassination of the country's nuclear scientists.
“All the elements involved in the assassinations of the country’s nuclear scientists have been identified and arrested,” Iran’s Intelligence Ministry announced in a statement.
“A number of countries, whose territories and facilities had been misused by the Mossad-backed terrorist teams, have provided the Iranian officials with relevant information,” the statement added.