The Kyrgyz foreign ministry today denied that any foreign nationals had been removed from the flight between Dubai and Bishkek once it had been grounded in Iran.
"Information... published in some media about the detention of foreign nationals on board the Kyrgyzstan Airlines aircraft does not correspond with reality," the foreign ministry statement said [AFP, 1 March].
The strange denial by Kyrgyzstan adds to the mystery surrounding Rigi’s arrest. Iran’s interior minister had already contradicted the official version by saying that Rigi was arrested in a foreign country and then brought back to Iran. The Pakistani ambassador in Tehran has also claimed that Rigi’s arrest could not have happened without his country’s direct involvement.
Some Iran watchers now believe that Rigi was arrested by Pakistani ISI and transported to Iran aboard a Pakistani falcon corporate jet. The forced landing of the Kyrgyz jet in Bandar Abbas could then be a diversion tactic to mask the arrest by ISI.
In a related development, the Kyrgyz government launched a protest with Iran for forcing one of its passenger planes to land in its territory.
"Kyrgyz ambassador Medetkan Sherimkulov met with the deputy foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran and protested on the inadmissibility of such actions from the Iranian side," the Kyrgyz foreign ministry statement said.
