A US citizen who mysteriously disappeared in Iran while on a business trip is a former FBI agent in New York and Florida known as a meticulous investigator and an expert in busting Italian and Russian mobsters.
The retired agent was identified as Robert Levinson, 59, of Coral Springs, Florida, a US official familiar with the case said on Tuesday.
He was last heard from around March 11 while in a coastal area of southern Iran, where he was working for an independent filmmaker, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation. Levinson was reportedly near or on Kish Island, a resort area in the Persian Gulf.
The US government is seeking information from Iran on Levinson's whereabouts through diplomatic channels, officials said.
The tall, burly Levinson is an expert on organized crime who sometimes worked 20-hour days, his former colleagues recalled.
Levinson was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration before he joined the FBI in 1976. He was assigned to New York, home to the notorious five Mafia families. He transferred to the Miami FBI office in the early 1980s and specialized in the Russian mob there.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko, while declining to identify the missing person, confirmed that he was a retired agent who was not working as an FBI contractor when he disappeared.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the agency has sent a letter to the Iranians through diplomatic intermediaries asking whether authorities had any information about the man.
"It's an American private citizen who is in Iran on private business," McCormack said. "We have been monitoring this situation for a couple of weeks now."
He said the State Department has been in constant contact with the man's family and his employers since he was reported missing.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
Cozy knits, sparkly bobbles and Santa hats were all the canine rage on Sunday, as hundreds of sausage dogs and their owners converged on central London for an annual parade and get-together. The dachshunds’ gathering in London’s Hyde Park came after a previous “Sausage Walk” planned for Halloween had to be postponed, because it had become so popular organizers needed to apply for an events licence. “It was going to be too much fun so they canceled it,” laughed Nicky Bailey, the owner of three sausage dogs: Una and her two 19-week-old puppies Ember and Finnegan, wearing matching red coats and silver
RSS