An Iranian businessman has been accused of paying $1.5 million to fund the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the US.
Reza Zarrab is suspected of sending the money to US-Iranian citizen Manssour Arbabsiar, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in May 2013 for conspiring to murder Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the US.
Arbabsiar admitted in court that he had hired a Mexican drug dealer in 2011 to murder the ambassador by bombing a restaurant where he was eating.
Arbabsiar told US officials he had been employed, financed and directed by the Iranian regime’s terrorist Quds Force – part of the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC).
Questions about Zarrab – also a Turkish citizen who has since been arrested in an ongoing $113 billion corruption probe – have now been raised in the Turkish parliament by Umut Oran, deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
He asked in a written parliamentary question to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan whether a report by Turkey’s MI.T intelligence service that Zarrab had sent $1.5 million for the assassination plot was correct, Cihan News Agency reported.
Oran also demanded to know whether Zarrab was a member of Iranian regime’s Quds Force working for the regime in Tehran.
He asked: “Is Reza Zarrab, who it is claimed sent money to this person, a member of the Iranian intelligence or military units. Have you received any information of this type?”
Oran also noted that the MI.T report dated October 21, 2011, said the FBI had been aware of the $1.5 million money transfer to Arbabsiar for the murder plot.
source: The National Council of Resistance of Iran
