Mohammad Bagher Moradi, an Iranian dissident journalist who took shelter in Turkey nine years ago, disappeared on May 30. Moradi’s father believes his son, who sought asylum in Turkey after fleeing Iran during a trial over his anti-regime news coverage, was abducted by Iranian operatives.
Moradi left his home in the Turkish capital Ankara on May 30, telling his family he was going shopping. When he did not return, the family repeatedly called him on his cellphone but to no avail. Moradi’s car was later found abandoned.
Hürriyet newspaper reported on Sunday that Moradi’s family filed a criminal complaint to the local prosecutor’s office, claiming he was kidnapped. His father Mohsen Moradi said his son has been "sought" by Iranian intelligence for a while.
Iran's western neighbor Turkey is the primary destination for dissidents who sometimes face jail terms in Iran for their anti-regime views. Some seek asylum claiming persecution back home while others use Turkey as a transit point for crossing into Europe or other countries.
A string of incidents and operations by Turkish security forces in the past few years revealed that Iranian intelligence, or at least people working for them, have been active in the country, targeting dissidents in assassination and abduction plots. Most recently, 16 suspects were detained in February for being part of a network working for Iranian intelligence that tried to smuggle dissidents back into Iran. The suspects were detained after the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) discovered the inner workings of the network. Among them were I.S., a businessperson who owns a defense company bearing his name, and D.Y., a prosecutor who was suspended from his job. The Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul has accused the suspects of a series of charges, from running and being members of a criminal organization to obtaining confidential information for the purpose of political or military espionage and limiting the freedom of an individual by force, threat and deception (a charge associated with abductions).
The indictment names former Col. Mashali Firouze, who was smuggled by the Iranian operatives to Iran, as one of the victims of the network, while his wife Arezou Saeidvand and son Arian Aminmavaneh are plaintiffs. Other people targeted by the network are former naval officer Mohammed Rezaei and economist Shahnam Golshani. The suspects’ attempt to help Iranian operatives smuggle Rezaei and Golshani had failed.