More embelishments

In a decision that experts called “historic,” a federal judge has ruled that Iran was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

 “The extensive record submitted to this court, including fact witnesses and expert testimony, is satisfactory to this court,” Judge Daniels said. The court “accepts as true” the various allegations of the plaintiffs and their experts, he declared, and “will issue an order” in the coming days that Iran bears legal responsibility for providing “material support” to the 9/11 plotters and hijackers.

Thomas Mellon, who headed a consortium of attorneys who worked on the $100 billion lawsuit, has said that the purpose of the suit is to force the U.S. government to hold Iran accountable for its role in 9/11.

Using a team of experts, including former members of the 9/11 Commission, and the testimony of three Iranian defectors, the lawyers put on a four-hour presentation for Daniels on Thursday.

During the hearing, defector Abdolghassem Mesbahi, who was once an aide and close confidant of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder, revealed that he had firsthand knowledge of terrorist plots dating to the 1980s.

Mesbahi, whose identity was kept secret until the hearing, said he knew in August 2001 that there was a plan in place to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings.

Another defector testified that he was with al-Qaida’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, when the terrorist attended four days of meetings with top Iranian officials in January 2001 to plan the 9/11 attacks.

The third defector told the judge that he helped write up the debriefing reports of Iran’s al-Qaida liaison, Imad Mugniyeh, after he returned to Iran from Afghanistan following 9/11.

To further prove Iran’s complicity in the attacks, Mellon presented the testimony of Janice Kephart, a former counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information and former immigration counsel to the Sept. 11 Commission.

Kephart said Iran put a “senior Hezbollah operative” on flights with the 9/11 hijackers in the months before the attacks, to ensure that the terrorists’ passports, which they obtained in Saudi Arabia, wouldn’t be stamped with Iranian or Afghan travel stamps, red flags that would have jeopardized their plot.

Kephart noted that travel documents are “important weapons” for terrorists.

Investigator Ken Timmerman, another terrorism expert who gathered information for the suit, said the judge’s ruling should make U.S officials take notice.

“This is a historic event. An official U.S court judgment that finds for the first time that the government of the Islamic part of Iran has been found to have direct, legal and criminal involvement in the 9/11 attacks. It’s nothing short of historic,” the investigator said.

S. M. Asadabadi in May detailed previous US administrative embelishments against Iran:  

The Secret War: The New Neo-Conservatism

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Additionally, a concentrated effort is being made to build up the Iranian threat to security. This is all very reminiscent of the embellishments made before the Iraq war.

 

The Domestic Iranian "Terrorists"

On June 2006, Sayed Mousavi, a community leader at An Nabi Mosque in Southern California, was arrested at gunpoint as family members watched in despair. The government originally charged him with terror-related charges that were later dropped.  However, in October 2008 he was convicted of filing false tax returns, omitting information on naturalization forms and violating an economic embargo against Iran and sentenced to 33 months in prison. He was released on good behavior, having spent 29 months in solitary confinement at a federal prison. Many believed the charges were baseless and Mousavi was targeted because of his religion. On May 5, 2010 the Ninth District Court of Appeal overturned the circuit court jury conviction of the immigration charges, thus clearing his good name.

Similarly, spiritual and motivational speaker, Rafic Labboun from the Bay Area, was arrested by FBI agents on allegations of credit card fraud. During the trial, an obscure and baseless connection was made attempting to link him with Hasan Nasrullah of Hezbollah. On July 19, Labboun was sentenced to 27 months with 3 years probation and fined $100,000. Labboun and his attorneys plan to appeal.

In 2007, former member of Guyana’s parliament and mayor of Guyana’s second largest city, Linden, Abdul Kadir was arrested in Trinidad in connection with a plot to detonate jet-fuel supply tanks and pipelines at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Kadir was picked up while en route to Iran for an Islamic conference in the Shi'a city of Qom. Declaring his innocence, defense lawyers have denied their client is a militant and claim he was framed by a shady informant. Kadir was sentenced to life on December, 14, 2009.

This persecution was not limited to individuals, Last year, the US government seized four mosques and a skyscraper owned by the Alavi Foundation, an Islamic nonprofit organization in New York that federal prosecutors alleged was a front for the Iranian government. Federal prosecutors claim the foundation sent millions of dollars to Iran's Bank Melli and the US Treasury Department further claims that the bank is a key fundraising arm for Iran's nuclear program. Unconfirmed reports say a possible agreement is in the works in which the federal government will have an observant role over the foundation and have full disclosure of all its activities and those affiliated with the organization.  Reportedly, several mosques in the country have been accused by federal prosecutors of laundering money to Iranian interests overseas when in fact they were supporting widows and orphans who have been victims of Al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Proxy Wars: US, Al-Qaeda's War Against Iran

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