Thursday, March 4, 2010

Iranian Reporter Among Detainees in Italy

Hamid Masouminejad, the Rome correspondent for Iran’s state-owned national TV network was confirmed to be one of the two Iranians arrested in Italy on arms trafficking charges.

IRIB foreign news director Hassan Abedini said the network would hire a lawyer to defend Mr. Masouminejad.

Italian police said Wednesday that five Italians and two Iranians were detained in the case. They are accused to ship weapons to Iran through third countries despite a UN embargo on such shipments.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't give much credit to this report,
I remember in the 80's in order to distract attention from some other problems they claimed the Iranian UN embassador was supposedly caught stealing a rain coat from some store.

as if Iran after so many years of sanctions have problems pushing guns around loool

always in such cases give Iran the benefit of the doubt... its a set up .. time will show why.

Nader Uskowi said...

Mr Masouminejad is of course innocent unless proven otherwise, and this case could well be of no merits, but the arrest of an Iranian journalist abroad is a newsworthy event, hence our coverage.

b said...

From what the Italian police has shown the actually smuggled "weapons" were combat knifes and pistols.

Certainly not the stuff Iran has to "smuggle" as it can make those things itself.

Anonymous said...

its a set up and just noise to bring Irans name into peoples minds connected with negative coverage.

Kemjika said...

remember that ITalian+NATO troops were bribing taliban fighters not to attack them, so italy definitely plays both sides of the coin,but i think VEVAK/IRGC intelligence got caught slipping a bit here, but its not a huge deal.Iran sits on huge oil reserves and a populous military with decent capabilities to say the least,so its not a big game changer in the short term. Italy is very messy currently. Ahmadinejad is a problem?? ha ha ...how about Berlusconi? lol....Italy can tell you the A to Z of corruption, so this story will boil over and calm down a bit. ITaliy isnt the problem currently. IRan wil still focus on israel and US in the ME. Iran has been due for a relation soon..