http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/wo..._r=1&ref=world
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In the latest twist in a murky tale, Pakistan said on Tuesday that an Iranian nuclear scientist who Tehran says was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency has taken refuge in the Iranian interests section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington.
Iranian officials were “making arrangements for his repatriation,” said Abdul Basit, a spokesman at the Pakistan Foreign Ministry. It was not clear how or when the scientist would leave the country.
The scientist, Shahram Amiri, 32, vanished during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June 2009. He had worked at Iran’s Malek Ashtar University, which is linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guards.
The United States government has never acknowledged Mr. Amiri’s existence, or admitted to a role in his disappearance.
“He is not in the Pakistani Embassy, per se,” Mr. Basit said. “He is at the Iranian interests section, which is manned by Iranian nationals.”
He added: “We understand that they are making arrangements for his repatriation.”
He declined to comment on how the Iranian scientist entered the mission section and denied that the incident could strain relations between Iran and Pakistan.
Earlier on Tuesday, Press TV, an Iranian state-run broadcaster, said Mr. Amiri had “reportedly taken refuge in Iran’s interest section in Washington, urging an immediate return to the country.”
Iran’s interest section is linked to the Pakistani Embassy, just as the United States maintains a similar status at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran. Iran and the United States severed diplomatic ties after the 1979 revolution.
The development was the latest in a series of confusing statements concerning the scientist.
In June, Iran publicized what it called a videotaped statement from Mr. Amiri purportedly proving its claim about the scientist’s disappearance. But a second videotape posted on the Internet showed a man who identified himself as the scientist claiming to be studying in the United States.
If the Iranian version is true, it is not clear how the man escaped his alleged captors to reach the Pakistani Embassy. If the second version is accurate, it is not clear why he would want to escape, or whether he had been taken under duress.
In the first video in June, Press TV said on Tuesday, Mr. Amiri said that he was abducted “in a joint operation by terror and kidnap teams from the U.S. intelligence service, C.I.A.” and from Saudi intelligence.
Press TV said the Iranian Foreign Ministry had handed over to Swiss diplomats in Tehran “new documents related to the abduction of the Iranian national by the C.I.A.” and called for Mr. Amiri’s “swift and unconditional release.”
The broadcaster quoted an “audio message obtained by Iran’s intelligence sources” as saying he had been offered $10 million “to appear on CNN and announce that he had willingly defected to the United States.” Iranian media have also said that a former Iranian deputy defense minister, Alireza Asgari, was abducted during a trip to Turkey in 2007. The two videos released in June served to deepen the mystery.
The first blurry Iranian video showed a man identified as the scientist, wearing a T-shirt and talking in Farsi through a computer phone connection, who said he was captured, taken to a house in Saudi Arabia and given an injection. He awoke on a plane bound for the United States.
The second video, released shortly afterward on YouTube, showed a young man in a suit who said he was Mr. Amiri, insisting that he was free and safe in the United States, working on a Ph.D. He said he had no interest in politics or experience in nuclear weapons programs.
Replyhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/wo...html?ref=world
WASHINGTON — An Iranian nuclear scientist who American officials say defected to the United States last year, provided information about Iran’s nuclear weapons program and then developed second thoughts, was flying home on Wednesday after he walked into the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani Embassy here on Monday night, saying he wanted a ticket back to Tehran.
On Wednesday, his wish was granted. The scientist, Shahram Amiri, “has left the United States for the Iranian capital, Tehran,” Press TV, a state-run satellite broadcaster, reported. A few hours later, state television said he was flying via Doha, Qatar, and would arrived in Tehran on Thursday.
The bizarre episode was the latest in a tale that has featured a mysterious disappearance from a hotel room in Saudi Arabia, rumors of a trove of new intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities and a series of contradictory YouTube videos. It immediately set off a renewed propaganda war between Iran and the United States.
Iranian officials have said for months that Amiri, 32, was kidnapped in the spring of 2009, taken to the United States and imprisoned and tortured. Iranian media quoted Mr. Amiri on Tuesday as saying that the United States had wanted to quietly return him to Iran and “cover up the kidnapping.”
American intelligence officials have scoffed at such accounts.
On Wednesday, Press TV said: “Analysts say U.S. intelligence officials decided to release Amiri after they failed to advance their propaganda campaign against Iran’s nuclear program via fabricating interviews with the Iranian national.”
State television showed footage of Mr. Amiri in what it said was an interview at the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistan Embassy on Tuesday. He said had been under “psychological pressure” in the United States and had been offered financial incentives to tell American media that he had come to America voluntarily to hand over a set of documents that were shown to him on a laptop. He had not agreed to do so, he said.
In the first official acknowledgment of Mr. Amiri’s presence in the United States, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that he had arrived in the country “of his own free will” and could leave whenever he wished — an indication, she said, that he was hardly a prisoner of the United States government.
But clearly the latest chapter in the saga of Mr. Amiri, a specialist in radiation detection, was an embarrassment to American intelligence agencies and offered a peephole view of what is informally called the “brain drain” program to lure Iranian scientists and engineers out of their country.
Mr. Amiri was described as an important confirming source about the Iranian nuclear program, but he was considered too junior and too removed from the program’s central leadership to have deep knowledge. According to an American intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Mr. Amiri used his expertise in radiation detection to monitor employee safety at many of Iran’s atomic plants and facilities.
The strange saga of Mr. Amiri began when he vanished during a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia 13 months ago. Almost immediately, it was clear that he was in the hands of Western intelligence agencies, and American officials now say that he was spirited quickly to the United States.
Shortly after Mr. Amiri disappeared, the Iranian government protested that he had been kidnapped by the United States, and it asked the United Nations secretary general to arrange for his return.
It is unclear when Mr. Amiri’s debriefings by American intelligence officials ended. But at some point he was placed in the national resettlement program, a sort of witness-protection program for defectors run by the C.I.A., and starting in the spring his nervousness about the fate of his wife and child grew markedly.
A former senior American intelligence official said he believed that the Iranians had threatened Mr. Amiri’s family, and a current American official said “the Iranians are not above using relatives to try to influence people.” Whatever the reason, one evening, looking haggard and unshaven, Mr. Amiri made a video, apparently on his laptop computer.
It showed a young man speaking in Persian through a computer phone hookup and saying that he had been kidnapped in a joint operation involving the C.I.A. and the Saudi intelligence service in Medina, Saudi Arabia, on June 3, 2009. State television offered a similar version on Wednesday, quoting Mr. Amiri as saying he had been offered a ride in a car by some Persian-speaking men in a car while he was on his way to a mosque in Medina.
The man who appeared in the earlier video also said he had been taken to a house and injected with something, and that when he awoke, he was on a plane heading to the United States.
But hours later, another video appeared on YouTube, apparently made after the first one, with professional help. Appearing in a well-lighted room that appeared to be a library, with the added touch of a globe and a chessboard, Mr. Amiri looked well groomed. He identified himself as a student in a Ph.D. program and said he was eager to complete his studies and return to his family.
He insisted that he was free and safe, and he demanded an end to what he called false videos about himself, saying he had no interest in politics or experience in any nuclear weapons programs. He then made a third video, similar to the first.
On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton left it unclear why Mr. Amiri made his dramatic appearance at a storefront offshoot of the Pakistani Embassy on Monday evening, seeking refuge, a passport and a plane ticket.
Mrs. Clinton, answering reporters’ questions at a news conference at the State Department with Iraq’s foreign minister, said Mr. Amiri had been scheduled to leave for Iran a day earlier, but “was unable to make all of the necessary arrangements” to travel through other countries. “He’s free to go,” she said. “He was free to come. Those decisions are his alone to make.”
It is unclear what awaits Mr. Amiri in Iran, whether a hero’s welcome or an interrogation by Iranian authorities. Iranian state television said on Wednesday that he would be met by members of his family when he arrives in Tehran on Thursday.
Mr. Amiri had worked at Malek Ashtar University in Iran, which is linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group based in France, reported in April that Mr. Amiri worked at the “Mojdeh” site, which they described as an atomic nerve center disguised as an academic complex.
Mr. Amiri is also believed to have once worked at Lavizan, a military research base outside Tehran that was razed in 2003 and 2004 as atomic inspectors in Vienna raised questions about its possession of highly enriched uranium.
Mrs. Clinton, in insisting that Mr. Amiri could leave, called for the release of three American hikers who were arrested and charged with entering Iranian territory in July 2009. But, unlike it did in the Russian spy swap last week, the United States made no effort to try to negotiate a trade, officials said.
