January 24-2014
Dubai says it has arrested three Iranians for kidnaping a British-Iranian businessman who went missing in Dubai in June.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry complained loudly Friday that one of the three arrested men soon died while in captivity. Dubai has announced the arrests, but hasn’t said anything about any of the men dying.
Britain’s Foreign Office said in August that it was in touch with the Dubai and Iranian governments over the case of Abbas Yazdanpanah-Yazdi, who went missing June 25 in Dubai. His wife d told a UAE newspaper that he might have been kidnapped by “elements in Iran.”
The Dubai government press office said January 9 that the state security service arrested three Iranians that day on suspicion of kidnapping Yazdi, a 44-year-old businessman who owns a general trading company in Dubai.
“The security apparatus identified the group members and … was able to uncover the method they had used to kidnap the suspect,” the statement said.
It quoted Dhahi Khalfan, Dubai’s deputy chairman of police and general security, as saying the three were arrested as they were about to dispose of some of Yazdi’s personal effects that had been under surveillance.
The three were being questioned in an effort to find out the whereabouts of Yazdi, the announcement said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague raised Yazdi’s disappearance with his Iranian counterpart, Ali-Akbar Salehi, during a telephone conversation on July 31.
The Dubai newspaper 7Days quoted Yazdi’s wife, Atena, as saying her husband was a close childhood friend of the son of former President Akbar-Ali Hashemi-Rafsanjani.
She said her husband had been detained in Iran in 1993 and held in solitary confinement by the intelligence service for six months. He had later traveled to London and obtained British citizenship, she said.
The couple moved to Dubai 10 years ago, 7Days said.
Atena, his wife of 17 years, contacted the authorities when he didn’t return home that night. She fears her husband—a trader and investor, who is CEO of the Dubai-based firm Echelon—has been kidnaped by Iranian intelligence officers. He disappeared after giving his first day of testimony in a case involving a contract dispute between Iran and Crescent Petroleum of the UAE. He had been due to return for further testimony the next day.