Iran’s Indian Agent Spied on London’s Ahwazi Arabs

This is a cross-post from Ahwazi News Agency.

Iran’s Indian agent spied on London’s Ahwazi Arabs

Wednesday, August 08, 2012 BAFS

Ahmad Kazmi, an Indian journalist recently charged with conducting an Iranian-backed terrorist attack in Delhi in February, spied on London’s Ahwazi Arab community for three years, Ahwaz News Agency can reveal.

In his frequent visits to London he repeatedly met with a leader of the Democratic Solidarity Party of Al-Ahwaz (DSPA) who died in mysterious circumstances in early 2008. Some in the Ahwazi Arab community in London suspect that he may have had some role in the death.

Evidence compiled against Kazmi by the Indian security services suggests he was funded and instructed by Iranian intelligence and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and visited Iran to meet his minders on a regular basis. Following an extensive five month investigation, the Delhi police have compiled a charge sheet of over 550 pages against Kazmi who is accused of facilitating a bomb attack by Iranian regime agents on the car of the Israeli ambassador to Delhi. Delhi Police’s special cell claims he provided logistical support to named Iranian citizens responsible for placing a magnetic bomb on an Israeli diplomatic car, seriously injuring the wife of the embassy’s defence attaché.

The terrorist attack occurred alongside similar attacks in Georgia and Thailand; a recent terrorist attack on a group of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria was also blamed on the Iranian regime. The attacks are thought to be in retaliation for the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, although some believe that these killings were the work of the regime itself.

Immediately before the Delhi terrorist attack, Kazmi visited Syria twice on the invitation of the Assad regime and provided reports in Urdu confirming the regime’s line. On his return to India just a week before the Delhi attack, Kazmi was briefly detained and questioned by Indian immigration officials who regarded his movements as suspicious.

A well-travelled and highly educated man fluent in Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, Arabic and English, Kazmi was able to charm those he met and gain their trust. His soft-spoken and affable nature coupled with his intelligence also enabled him to win the trust of the upper echelons of India’s political class and he even attended press conferences at the Israeli embassy. As such, he made an ideal candidate for intelligence gathering on behalf of the Iranian regime.

Ahmad Kazmi with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik

Kazmi was well versed in the art of diplomacy and trust building, although often lying about who his employers were. He would introduce himself to Ahwazi activists as a journalist from India’s state-owned Doordashan TV, for which he worked as a correspondent covering the Iraq War. He did not reveal to Ahwazis he met that he had in fact left Doordashan to work for Iranian state-owned broadcaster Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) following the end of the Iraq War.

Arab governments were suspicious of the nature of Kazmi’s activities. It has recently emerged that while he was covering the Iraq War Kazmi visited Amman and was arrested by the Jordanian intelligence service, the Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah, who suspected him of spying, but he was released after interrogation. The Saddam regime had reportedly suspected him of being an American agent due to his accent in Arabic, which was mistaken for an American accent, and his line of questioning.

Did Kazmi have a role in Mansour Silawi’s mysterious death?

Kazmi started infiltrating the Ahwazi community in 2005, soon after the April 2005 intifada. It also appears that Kazmi may have also been targeting the Iranian Kurdish community, particularly the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan.

Other than gaining information on opponents of the Iranian regime, it is unclear why a specialist in the Middle East and South Asia would make frequent and lengthy visits to London or how he funded these visits. His extensive questioning of Ahwazi activists never resulted in any article, indicating that his interest in the Ahwazi issue was not journalistic. Ahwazi activists refused his repeated requests for the names and contact details of activists in Al-Ahwaz. He said he wanted this highly sensitive information to conduct interviews in Iran on the plight of the Ahwazi Arabs, but there was a consensus that such sensitive information could end up being passed to the Iranian intelligence services.

Email from Kazmi enquiring on the succession to Ahwazi leader Mansour Silawi al-Ahwazi

Kazmi’s contact with the Ahwazi community ended abruptly after the sudden death of Ahwazi leader Mansour Silawi al-Ahwazi in March 2008. He had repeatedly visited Mansour, who suspected him of being an Iranian informant. Others involved in the Ahwazi cause also met Kazmi, who would take photos of them. In one case, he took photos of members of a family he had only just met, including children.

Kazmi’s contact list, revealed in several emails to friends, includes senior members of Islamic groups in the UK, notably the Muslim Council of Britain, the Indian Muslim Federation, the Ahl-ul-bayt Islamic Centre, the British Muslim Institute, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) and a senior imam at the Finchley Mosque. He was also in contact with figures within the Bahrain Freedom Movement, which is accused by the Bahraini government of being a front for the Iranian government.

An example of Kazmi’s correspondence, revealing the email addresses of those he was in contact with in London. Email addresses have been redacted.

There is no proof that any of these organisations had any knowledge of Kazmi’s activities, although the IHRC and the Ahl-ul-bayt Islamic Centre are linked to the Iranian regime.

The IHRC is a fake human rights organisation that has failed to criticise the abuse of the rights of Iran’s minority ethnic and religious groups, including Sunnis. The group is actively campaigning for Kazmi’s release, claiming that he is being persecuted for supporting the Palestinian cause, although his views are widely shared among Muslims and non-Muslims in India and therefore unremarkable. It is therefore highly unlikely that his views would prompt the Indian or Israeli governments to launch a terrorist attack on an Israeli diplomatic vehicle in order to frame Kazmi for a crime he did not commit.

Kazmi can be assured of an open trial by an independent judiciary in a democratic country and none of the charges he faces would result in execution if he is found guilty. Meanwhile, the Ahwazi Arab victims of the regime that employed him continue to face secretive trials without access to lawyers, convicted on trumped up charges of “enmity with God” for criticising the discrimination and persecution they face. Kazmi is fortunate to be born an Indian citizen and not a citizen of Iran.

Update:

A correspondent sends us a list of Kazmi’s contacts in media agencies and activist groups. If the charges against him turn out to be broadly accurate, many of these contacts would have been duped just as Kazmi duped others.

On first glance, however, there are names there who have shown a marked sympathy towards the Khomenists. Does anyone recognize names?

British Muslim Community:

• Iqbal Asaria, Chair, Business & Economics Committee, Muslim Council of Britain’
• Ali Rizvi, Ahl-ul-bayt Islamic Centre;
  Shamsuddin Agha, President, Indian Muslim Federation (UK);
• Dr. Saeed Al Shehabi, Bahrain Freedom Movement, trustee of two Muslim charities in Central London;
• Dar Al-Hekma Trust and the Abrar Islamic;
• Lord Adam Patel, advisor to the Muslim Council of Britain
• Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Director of the British Muslim Institute and Leader of the Muslim Parliament;
• Asker Jetha, Islamic Human Rights Commission;
• Massoud Shadjareh, Chairman, Islamic Human Rights Commission;
• Ahmed J Versi, Editor and Publisher of Muslim News;
• Mufti Abdul Kadir Barkatullah, Senior Imam at Finchley Mosque and Shariah Supervisor at Islamic Bank Britain

Media:

• Qamar Abbas, IRIB;
• Setareh Alavi-Moghadam, BBC journalist;
• Saeed Naqvi, Indian journalist;
• Akhilesh Suman, Managing Editor, Chanakya;
• Shafi Naqi Jamie, BBC World Service journalist;
• Surya Gangadharan, journalist, CNN-IBN;
• Jaafar Al-Ahmar, journalist, Dar al-Hayat;
• Pervaiz Alam, Broadcaster, writer and producer.  Pervaiz Alam has recently directed and produced an acclaimed BBC series of 156 radio plays in Hindi, Life Gulmohar Style, on India’s urban women, broadcast by more than 15 FM Networks in India. After having worked with the BBC Hindi and Urdu Services as a senior producer for more than ten years,he went on to join the BBC World where he was the Executive Producerof a number of popular television programmes such as the Question Time India, India Business Report, Mastermind India, Bollywood Bosses,Bollywood Inc. and HARDtalk India;
• Nagendar Sharma, BBC World Service;
• Shivkant Sharma, BBC Hindi Radio editor;
• Roger Hardy, BBC World Service;
• Mohammad Waziri, BBC;
• Qurban Ali, Indian journalist;
• Mahpara Safdar, BBC Producer;
• Indu Shekhar, BBC Business Development Manager for South Asia;
• Jamal Mosavi, BBC Persian Service;
• Asaf Jilani, Senior Analyst at the BBC and reporter at BBC Urdu Service.

Think tanks and academia:

• Nadim Shehadi, Lebanese economist and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Programme at Chatham House;
• Prof. Mohd Mujtaba Khan, Director, Dr KR Narayanan Centre for Dalit & Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi;
• Saqeb Mueen Director, New Media/Editor-in-chief, RUSI;
• Dr Sajjad Rizvi, Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History,Exeter University;
• Simon Qadri, formerly at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Islamic Media Unit, now working for Christian Solidarity Worldwide;
• Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South Asia, International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Others

• Wamiq Faizanur Rahman, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow;
• Askari Zaidi;
• Raja Asghar Ali, Software developer Manager at Transguard Group, Dubai;
• Ali J. Zaidi, London business director originally from Punjab, India;
• Zaheer Jafri;
• “Abdulhai M”, US State Department;
• Shamshad Kazmi;
• Shabbir Razvi, Mortgage Force UK.