Saudi Arabia said it “deplored” Tehran’s charge that an Iranian nuclear scientist was kidnapped on a pilgrimage to Mecca and hauled off to the US, a Saudi newspaper reported yesterday.
Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman Osama Nugali told Asharq Alawsat that he was “stunned by the declarations and allegations” from Tehran, which he “deplored.”
Nugali said that nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri’s disappearance had sparked an extensive investigation by the Saudi government.
“After having been informed of his disappearance by the Iranian delegation [in Mecca], Saudi authorities undertook an intensive search in Medina as well as in all the hospitals in the region of Mecca,” Nugali told the newspaper.
PILGRIMAGE
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Tuesday accused the US of abducting nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who went missing while on an umrah minor pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia earlier this year.
“Based on existing pieces of evidence that we have at our disposal the Americans had a role in Mr Amiri’s abduction,” Mottaki said at a press conference in Farsi which was translated into English by Press TV channel. “The Americans did abduct him. Therefore we expect the American government to return him.”
Mottaki said Amiri had travelled to Saudi Arabia to perform the minor Muslim pilgrimage when he disappeared.
ACCOUNTABLE
“He disappeared in Saudi Arabia and naturally we ask the Saudi government to look into the case ... Saudi Arabia must be held accountable in this regard,” he said.
The US State Department on Tuesday declined to comment.
“We are aware of the Iranian claims,” said department spokesman Philip Crowley. “I have no information on that.”
“I’m not going to say anything else,” he insisted as reporters pressed him on the matter at a press briefing.
Earlier, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast acknowledged for the first time that Amiri is a nuclear scientist, something Iranian officials had previously declined to confirm.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
RSS