Legal Flaws in US Complaint Against Iran

[Prometheus Bound]

Legal Flaws in US Complaint Against Iran
by Kaveh L. Afrasiabi
03.11.11

The US allegation of an Iranian government plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington is meritless as a matter of law, principally due to the egregious flaws and inexplicable discrepancies in the (amended) complaint in a federal court in Manhattan.

The complaint names two individuals, Arbabisar and Shakuri, as defendants....

1. The complaint alleges that Arbabisar has a "cousin" in Iran who is a member of Iran's Qods Force and who gave money to Arbabisar, both directly as well as through Shakuri, for the specific purpose of killing the Saudi ambassador in Washington. But, for a mysterious reason known only to the US government, the "cousin" is mentioned anonymously as "Iranian Official # 1) and, more important, is not even named as a defendant in the case, even though he is said to have plotted the kidnapping of the Saudi ambassador.

.....it is highly odd that the US government does not bring charges against a particular individual alleged to have played a key role in a terror plot, this while another individual, Shakuri, allegedly residing in Iran is charged and an arrest warrant has been issued for him. .....The likely answer is that this individual is fictitious....

2. Per the media reports, the US law enforcement officials alerted president Obama about this conspiracy "in June" and, yet, .....only at the request of US law-enforcement agents did the informer bother to audiotape his conversation with Arbabisar on July 14th. This is highly peculiar. A serious terror plot involving an Iranian not taped? .....This too lends itself to the suspicion that we are dealing with a fictitious rather than actual terror plot, hatched by the US to smear and intimidate Iran.

Kaveh L. Afrasiabi is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy and a co-author of Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/afrasiabi031111.html

[OnyxCollie]

1. Holy shit. Somebody unrecced this.

MUST. DEFEND. OBAMA.