Police identify Iranian suspects in Delhi envoy attack

PanARMENIAN.Net - Police in New Delhi and Indian intelligence agencies announced that they have identified three Iranians responsible for plotting and carrying out the attack on an Israeli diplomat's car in the Indian capital, Jerusalem Post reported citing The Times of India.

Indian police identified the three men as Houshang Afshar Irani, Seyed Ali Mahdiansadr and Mohammad Reza Abolghasemi, and said that all three hold Iranian passports, and traveled to New Delhi 15 days before the bombing on tourist visas, according to the report.

After the attack, which injured a diplomat's wife and her driver, the three escaped India for a Middle Eastern nation. Indian police have not confirmed whom the men were working for, though an unnamed source told the Times the trio was connected to an Iranian spy agency.

The source explained that the Iranian suspect Irani had arrived in February 2011, a year before the attack, to plan the bombing along with Indian journalist Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi who was arrested earlier this month. Indian police say they have conclusive evidence connecting Kamzi - an Indian national who was working for Iran's official IRNA news agency - to the Iranians conspiring to attack the Israeli embassy.

While Kamzi was integral in the trio's reconnaissance operations, it was Irani that rented a motorcycle and followed the car of Tal Yehoshua Koren, tacked the magnetic bomb on the vehicle, and sped off while the car exploded behind him, the source said.

The Iranian government denied any involvement in the conspiracies in the three countries.

As well as the alleged involvement of Iranians, security analysts have also stressed the similarity of the method used for the attack in India - a magnetic car bomb - to the technique used to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.

Over the last two years, three scientists and a physicist have been killed in bombings which Tehran has blamed on the Israeli and US secret services.