December 20-2013
. . . missing 18 m onths
The former chief of prosecutions in Britain says he believes an Anglo-Iranian dual national has been killed by Iran after the UK government supplied Iran with information from his computer.
The former chief prosecutor, Lord Macdonald, told the BBC he suspected Britain’s cooperation with Iran could be behind the death of Abbas Yazasanpanah Yazdi.
Yazdi was born in Iran, had become a British national and had been living in Dubai for about a decade when he disappeared more than a year ago on June 25, 2012, at the age of 44.
He had once been investigated by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) over allegations he was involved in oil industry bribery.
Lord Macdonald said that as recently as this past March the SFO was still passing files from Yazdi’s seized computer to Iran at the request of the Home Office, Britain’s interior ministry.
“I think it is now incumbent on the Home Office to explain why they thought it was right to supply confidential material about a British citizen to an Iranian state agency that has historically been involved in summary extra-judicial executions,” Macdonald said.
Concerns about Yazdi’s safety reached the cabinet level in London shortly after he disappeared. Officials said that Foreign Secretary William Hague raised Yazdi’s disappearance more than a year in talks with his Iranian counterpart.
At the time, a government official was quoted as saying: “We believe that allegations that elements in Iran might be responsible for Mr. Yazdi’s disappearance are plausible, and we are taking them very seriously.”
Officers from SO15, the counter-terrorism command located within Scotland Yard, the headquarters for the London Metropolitan Police, became involved in the investigation into Yazdi’s whereabouts.
Yazdi disappeared hours after he finished giving evidence by video link to a long-running international arbitration tribunal in The Hague involving UAE-based Crescent Petroleum and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).
Yazdi had been due to return to complete his testimony the following day. He never reappeared. His wife said she feared he had been kidnapped by Iranian intelligence officers and taken to Iran.
A Dubai-based friend of the missing man, named Reza, who did not want his full name used for safety concerns, told Khaleej Times in the UAE he saw three possible motives for his friend’s kidnapping.
One was the fact Yazdi was giving evidence against the NIOC for its 2009 cancellation of a contract with the UAE’s Crescent Petroleum; the second was Yazdi’s close personal and business relationship with Mehdi Hashemi, the son of former Iranian President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani; and the third was a lawsuit he had filed against the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) 10 days before his disappearance, resulting from an allegation the SFO had passed on personal details to the Iranian government it had garnered from a 2003 raid on Yazdi’s London home. The SFO has refused to confirm or deny whether it passed the information to Iran. Macdonald sees that as the key.