A senior Iranian official has accused the CIA, Mossad, and the British MI6 of a joint plot by kidnapping and torturing one of the country's former military officials in a bid to fabricate unfounded charges against Tehran. The official, who was speaking to Iran's Fars News Agency (FNA) on condition of anonymity, said the intelligence agencies of the three countries schemed the abduction of Alireza Asgari, a retired defense ministry official, to launch anti-Iranian propaganda aiming at portraying Tehran as a threat to the region.
He told FNA that Asgari, who had retired for four years, was kidnapped in mid-winter "on his trip to the Turkish city of Istanbul." "After abduction, he was transferred to the U.S. Incerlik airbase in Turkey and then to a CIA secret base," he said.
The Iranian official said Asgari was tortured physically and mentally pretty much the same way as detainees in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons were, in order to coerce him into making anti-Iranian remarks. “The primary objective behind this scenario was to have an excuse for a new psychological warfare against Iran and to cover the West's failures in Iraq and Lebanon," he added. |