November 15, 2020
A hellish Pizza Hut delivery: ‘Iran’s bomb’ to take out foes in
Paris
Four Iranians are on trial over a plot to target
an anti-Tehran rally with an explosive device allegedly handed over in a
pizzeria
This rally near Paris in support of
Iranian opposition groups was allegedly the plot’s target
REGIS DUVIGNAU
Peter Conradi, Paris
They looked like any couple out shopping
as they walked across the Place d’Armes in Luxembourg’s old city and into a
branch of Pizza Hut. But the police were watching closely.
It was the pivotal moment in a terrorist
plot blamed on Iran that is about to be laid bare in court — to the fury of the
regime in Tehran, which has threatened retaliation.
Prosecutors claim Iranian diplomat
Assadollah Assadi handed over a bomb package
This was no casual encounter, as the
plainclothes officers watching them knew. The diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, 48,
is thought to be a member of Iran’s intelligence service, and the package
allegedly contained a powerful bomb.
Prosecutors say Assadi wanted the couple
to plant it at a mass rally near Paris two days later attended by tens of
thousands of opponents of Iran’s theocratic regime and by prominent British and
American politicians.
The suspected Pizza Hut plot, which would
have caused a mass loss of life if
Prosecutors
claim Iranian diplomat Assadollah
Assadi
handed over a bomb package
it had succeeded, was thwarted in an
operation also involving Belgian, French and German police.
Next week, after a two-year
investigation, the three suspects, together with a fourth man, are due to go on
trial in Antwerp, where the couple lived, accused of terrorism offences.
Belgian investigators are convinced their
actions were approved at the highest level in Tehran, which would make their
conviction a serious embarrassment for the Iranians.
“The
plan for the attack was conceived in the name of Iran and under its leadership.
It was not a matter of Assadi’s personal initiative,” wrote Jaak Raes, head of
the VSSE, Belgium’s state security service, in a letter to the federal
prosecutor, one of many documents that reveal in extraordinary detail the
planning that went into the alleged plot.
Assadi, a third counsellor at Iran’s
embassy in Vienna, is also an officer of its intelligence and security ministry
— serving in the internal security directorate, considered a terrorist
organisation by the European Union — and as such was the “operational
commander” of the mission, asserts Raes.
Opposition
leader Maryam Rajavi appears to have been the operation’s main target
REGIS DUVIGNAU
The operation’s primary target appears to
have been Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
(NCRI), a coalition of opposition groups, which was due to hold its annual
rally on June 30, 2018.
Among the important foreign guests at the
rally in Villepinte, in the northeast suburbs of Paris, were Rudy Giuliani, the
New York mayor turned lawyer for Donald Trump, and Bill Richardson, a past US
ambassador to the UN.
Several prominent British critics of the
Iranian regime also attended the meeting, among them Theresa Villiers, the
former environment secretary. “If the defendants are convicted in this case,
this must be a wake-up call for the international community to put more
pressure on the tyrannical Iranian regime to end its destabilising support for
terrorist groups around the world,” she said.
Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, has
dismissed the alleged plot as a “false flag” operation by those trying to drive
a wedge between Tehran and the West, at a time when Europe and America were at
odds over Trump’s decision in 2018 to pull out of Iran’s nuclear accord with
the West. Tehran has called Assadi’s arrest “fundamentally illegal” and
reserved the right to a “proportionate response” against those countries
involved.
Donald
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was a guest at the rally
REGIS DUVIGNAU
The NCRI, which has powerful backers
abroad, especially on the American right, has long been a thorn in the side of
Iran’s rulers. In 2002 it revealed the existence of nuclear testing facilities
that led to Tehran being declared in breach of a non-proliferation treaty. The
NRCI was itself declared a terrorist organisation by America in 1997, but
removed from the list in 2012.
The plot to target it appears to have
been hatched after popular protests that erupted in December 2017 in more than
100 Iranian cities and were blamed by Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme
leader, on “enemies of the republic”. In a speech the following month he
claimed the streets were under the control of the People’s Mojahedin
Organisation of Iran (MEK), the main element in the NCRI, and threatened
“retribution”.
Assadi, who had previously served in Iraq
and was familiar with explosives, was ordered to carry out the Paris operation
shortly afterwards, investigators believe. Travel records show he made several
trips from Austria to Iran during the first months of 2018, apparently in
connection with its planning. He then allegedly recruited Saadouni and Naami to
plant the bomb.
Saadouni had already been living in
Belgium for almost a decade after being granted political asylum because of his
membership of the MEK. He was later joined there by Naami, whom he met online
while she was in Tehran, where she worked as a swimming pool attendant. The
couple married but have reportedly since become estranged.
Theresa
Villiers MP called for pressure to be put on Iran to end its support for
terrorists
HANNAH MCKAY
Assadi has refused to co-operate with
investigators, citing his diplomatic status, but his alleged fellow
conspirators have been more forthcoming. Saadouni revealed he was first
approached in 2012 by Assadi, who said he was looking for information about the
MEK. They met in Munich, where the diplomat — whom he knew under the code name
of Daniel — made clear he was working for Iranian intelligence.
The two men held several more meetings,
including in Salzburg, Vienna, Milan, Venice and Luxembourg, at which Assadi
paid Saadouni varying amounts of money — sometimes €3,500 (£3,140), and at
other times €4,000, “depending on the type of information” he supplied. At
Assadi’s behest, Saadouni also travelled in 2013 to the Iranian city of Ahvaz.
Often Naami would come on the trips, too.
The couple appeared to have lived comfortably off the money. A pop music fan,
Saadouni reportedly spent €400 on a ticket to see Roger Waters of Pink Floyd
perform in Antwerp.
In March 2018, while meeting Saadouni on
a train between Vienna and Salzburg — apparently to avoid detection — Assadi
spoke about the rally near Paris and “said he wanted to do something with the
device” there, Saadouni told investigators.
Assadi said he would first have to
discuss it with Tehran, because the device had to be tested. Travel records
show he made several visits to Iran, apparently in connection with the
operation, returning from the last one on June 22. He is thought to have carried
the bomb in his luggage, which, since he was a diplomat, would not have been
searched.
Six days later in the Luxembourg Pizza
Hut, Assadi allegedly handed over the bomb, containing more than 1lb of TATP,
or triacetone triperoxide, a powerful explosive popular with terrorists because
it is difficult to detect. He also gave the couple €11,710 apparently as
payment — or part payment — for the operation.
Although Saadouni and Naami have admitted
receiving the package, they deny they knew it was a bomb. “I had no idea that I
had been given explosives,” Saadouni told police, saying he thought the device
was merely something that “makes a lot of noise”.
Mobile phone records show Assadi texted
the couple later that day to make sure they had followed instructions regarding
the device, which they referred to as “the PlayStation”. They replied that
everything was set. It was agreed they would meet again on July 1 — the day
after the attack was due to have taken place.
Western intelligence services were
already on their trail, however, apparently as a result of a tip-off from a
“partner service” — thought to have been Israel’s Mossad — that Saadouni and
Naami “might be involved in an act of violence or an attempt in France”. The
VSSE passed on this information to the heads of Belgium’s federal police and
prosecution service on June 25 — three days before the Luxembourg meeting.
The pair were arrested on the day of the
planned attack in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, in the east of Brussels. Their luggage
was found to contain the explosive, which was “wrapped in plastic and concealed
in the lining of a toiletry bag” and was primed to go off. A remote trigger was
found concealed among feminine hygiene items in another small bag within a
brown handbag belonging to Naami.
The bomb, according to Dovo, Belgium’s
bomb disposal unit, was a homemade one that was “very sensitive to heat,
friction and shock”. Although the materials in it were freely available, anyone
putting it together would have needed “a good knowledge of electronics”. It did
considerable damage when it was detonated in a controlled explosion, destroying
a remote-control robot and slightly injuring a Dovo officer.
Assadi was arrested on July 1 in Germany,
as he was driving towards Austria, where he would have enjoyed diplomatic
immunity. Despite Iranian protests, he was later extradited to Belgium.
A red notebook containing instructions to
the bombers was found in Assadi’s car. These included how to activate and
detonate the bomb, and how the couple should behave after the attack. They were
told not to travel by plane for several months, and to stop using old email
addresses and set up new ones.
During questioning in March, Assadi told
Belgian police that armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, as well as
in Iran, were interested in the outcome of his case and would be “watching from
the sidelines to see if Belgium would support them or not”, according to
documents obtained by Reuters.
Asked about Assadi’s comments, a
spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor said: “Such threats can occur, but
we always take the necessary security measures.” The diplomat’s lawyer, Dimitri
de Beco, denied his client was making threats. “It is absolutely not a threat
of retaliation and if it’s understood that way it’s a misinterpretation,” he
told Reuters. “He will explain the sense of his remarks to the court.”
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