Habib Chaab he is an Iranian dissident who lives in exile in Stockholm: in mid-October he left for Istanbul and for a few weeks nothing more was heard. He reappeared on November 13 in a video broadcast by Iranian state TV: he confessed to having taken part in the organization of an attack against a military parade of the Pasdaran which on 22 September 2018 killed 25 in Ahvaz, in the southwest of the Country.
A few days later, Turkish investigators reported what had happened. Chaab was lured to Istanbul with a trap, a woman, Saberine Saedi, who works for the Iranian services and whom Chaab had known for some time, had made an appointment with him in the Turkish city, perhaps with the proposal of a love affair, perhaps with the excuse of lending him money. The established location was a gas station in Beylikduzu, a neighborhood in the west, where she waited for him in a white van, but not alone. With her was a group of men related to Naji Sharifi Zindashti, a drug trafficker of Iranian origin who has lived in Turkey for several years and who in the past has been brought up for other actions against Iranian dissidents.
The group transported Chaab more than 1,600 km to the border with Iran where he was picked up by other traffickers. This is the reconstruction of the Turkish authorities, who a few days ago arrested 11 people for the kidnapping and gave to SkyNews the images of the cameras that tell the whole operation: you can see the woman arriving at the airport, the meeting at the petrol station, the white van that at a certain point is replaced by a black sedan.
Iran, the noose that wakes up the EU
by GIANNI VERNETTI
December 14, 2020-
The rebellion of the Arab minority in Iran
Chaab is a rather well-known figure of the Iranian opposition abroad, he was the president of Asmla, a separatist movement that wants the independence of Khuzestan, the province of southwestern Iran where the majority is Arab. Khuzestan is the country’s oil heart, but its citizens only benefit from a small part of oil revenues, and for years tensions with the central authority have been strong due to human rights violations, arrests, death sentences of activists.
Iran accuses Chaab and Asmla of being responsible for the 2018 attack: back then there was indeed a claim by Asmla, but there was also another by Isis, neither of which was endured by evidence. Friends of Chaab, who also has Swedish citizenship, claim that his confession was extorted from him by torture. Sweden says Iran denies consular rights to its citizen, no one has been able to meet him and there are fears that he may be sentenced to death.
The operations of the Iranian services against dissidents in Europe
The Chaab case has become a problem for Turkey and has alarmed the many Iranian dissidents living in Europe. Istanbul is not a safe place for those who oppose the Iranian regime. Three years ago, Saeed Karimian, the owner of a Persian-language satellite channel broadcasting from Dubai, an opponent of the government, was killed in front of his house by men linked to Iran, Turkish intelligence said. Two hooded killers approached him in a jeep and fired 27 shots at him. Last year, Masoud Molavi Vardanjani, a former Iranian defense official passed to the opposition, was also killed in Istanbul, also in this case there were behind the Iranian services according to the Turkish intelligence.
The list of operations against dissidents abroad is long, Iran has always denied any involvement but has not explained several things and has also ended up under sanctions for the murders. Chaab magically appeared in Tehran but no one explained how he got there, from Sweden where he lived in exile, the same happened to Ruhollah Zam, the dissident journalist who lived in France but was lured to Iraq, it’s not clear how, and from there he was taken to Tehran, where he was executed a few days later. Last year, the European Union imposed sanctions on two Iranian intelligence ministry officials involved in two murders of dissidents living in Belgium, Mohammad samadi killed in 2015 and Ahmad Nissi, the founder of Asmla, who was shot in front of his house in The Hague.
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