"The Rigis of Baluchistan" are actually the Rigis of the Shah's royal court and neocon swindlers

Move over Ahmad Chalabi and "Curveball," there is a new neocon act in town -- they are the Riggi family of Jundallah, the CIA-backed Iranian Baluchi terrorist group operating on Pakistani soil.

Iran has not only captured Abdolmalek Rigi, the head of the Jundallah terrorist group active in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province, his brother Abdolhamid Rigi, and gained valuable intelligence about CIA operations against Iran but has been able to link the Jundallah group to Washington-based neocons who front for Israeli and Iranian royal restoration interests. Some of the Washington neocon interests promoted the pre-Iraq War propaganda efforts of Iraqi National Congress official Ahmad Chalabi.

The support network for Jundallah in Washington was largely crafted by Richard Holbrooke, neocon think tanks, and Holbrooke's Perseus LLC "silent partner" George Soros and his array of Open Society Institute-funded anti-Iran non-governmental organizations (NGOs), according to information received by WMR's sources in south and east Asia. Holbrooke's Perseus private equity fund is linked to Soros through the Perseus-Soros BioPharmaceutical Fund, L.P.

Holbrooke also served as a director of the anti-Chinese American Himalayan Foundation led by the billionaire defense tycoon husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Richard Blum. A previously reported by WMR, Holbrooke's central Asia strategy is to cause problems for trans-Asian oil and natural gas pipelines from countries like Turkmenistan, Iran, and Uzbekistan to China.

Holbrooke has also been involved in the legitimization of fraudulent elections through his membership of the board for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and as an advisory board member of Public Strategies, Inc. (PSI) , which represented Diebold Election Systems in 2004. PSI is now headed by Dan Bartlett, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush.

More problematic for America's relations with Iran is Holbrooke's co-founding and co-chairmanship of the group, "United Against a Nuclear Iran," the advisory board of which includes such pro-Israeli neocons as James Woolsey and which was co-founded by Holbrooke's fellow pro-Israel "Trojan Horse" in the Obama administration, Dennis Ross.

The senior advisor to Holbrooke at the State Department is Iranian-American scholar Vali Nasr, a former professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. During the Bush administration, Nasr consulted with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on U.S.-Iranian relations. Nasr is close to the exiled family of Iran's late Shah. Nasr's father was the chief of staff for the Shah's wife, Empress Farah.

Abdolhamid Rigi has revealed that the Rigi's interlocutor with Washington and the CIA is his father's cousin, Amanollah-Khan Rigi, who, like Nasr's father, was a member of the Shah's royal court. In 2005, American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Michael Ledeen, a fanatic supporter of another Iranian terrorist group, the Mojahedin e Khalq (MEK), hosted Amanollah-Khan Rigi at a conference on a federalized Iran at the AEI's Wohlstetter Conference Center in Washngton, DC. In addition to the "Baluchi" representative Rigi, also participating in the conference were Iranian separatists representing Kurds and Azeris. Rigi boasted that he was the leader of a 300,000-member Baluchi tribe, which was a complete fabrication.

Amanollah-Khan Rigi is also deeply enmeshed in other neocon operations in Washington, including his advisory board membership for the Alliance for Democracy in Iran (ADI), a group linked to the neocon and Jewish-centric Hudson Institute, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

As much as it may be difficult to believe, Amanollah-Khan Rigi may be a bigger con-man that Ahmad Chalabi. Rigi is a registered real estate agent in New Jersey and was involved in an attempt to pawn off as a real a mummy of an alleged Persian princess. The "mummy" was offered for sale in October 2000 by Wali Mohammed Reeki (Rigi), a Baluchi tribal leader and camel breeder in Pakistan near the Afghan border. Rigi said he obtained the mummy from an Iranian salesman after an earthquake in Quetta, Pakistan and the mummy was on the block in the black antiquities market for between $11 and $30 million. Later, an archaeologist proclaimed the mummy to be that of a Persian princess who lived around 600 BC. Heightening interest in the mummy, she was later proclaimed by the archaeologist to be none other than Princess Rhodugune, the daughter of Persian King Xerxes I and a member of the Achaemenid dynasty.

But there was controversy over whether the mummy was a Persian or Egyptian princess married to a Persian prince since mummification was only known in Egypt, not Persia. Iran claimed that as a Persian princess, the mummy should be returned to Iran. Pakistan said that because the mummy was found in Quetta, it belonged to Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban said the mummy was taken from Afghanistan and that it belonged to Afghanistan.

However, it was later discovered that the mummy was not an ancient Persian princess but of a young woman who had probably been murdered in 1996. Pakistani police began arresting a number of Baluchis and others for murder.

Amanollah-Khan Rigi acted as a middleman for an "unknown" antiquities dealer in Karachi who claimed the mummy came from a Zoroastrian family in Iran. Rigi sent four photographs to New York's Metropolitan Museum hoping for a confirmation of the mummy's authenticity.

Essentially, the Holbrooke team of neocons and con-men is trying to do to Iran what Chalabi and neocons like Ledeen, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith did to Iraq, mostly through Chalabi and other frauds.


The takedown of Abdolmalek Rigi by the joint Iran-Pakistan intelligence operation in a two-plane decoy operation reported previously by WMR has now been confirmed by Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry. The Kyrgyz government is now stating that Rigi was not arrested by Iran aboard the Kyrgystan airline that was forced to land in Bandar Abbas, Iran after taking off from Dubai. Even though Kyrgyz aviation authorities reported that two people were detained in Bandar Abbas, the Kyrgyz government is now claiming that no foreign nationals were apprehended on the plane. The Bishkek government is trying to provide plausible deniability that Iran and Pakistan conducted a decoy operation that saw Rigi taken directly from Pakistan to Iran on another small plane, while decoy personnel, masquerading as Rigi and his aide, were seen being taken off the Kyrgyz plane in Iran. It is now believed that Kyrgyz security personnel aboard the Kyrgyzstan flight tipped off Bishkek about the operation and that prompted Holbrooke to depart quickly for Georgia after Rigi's no-show at Manas.

WMR has also learned that Holbrooke met in Tbilisi, Georgia with Azeri Iranians working with former Savak agents for the Shah. Holbrooke's plan appears to be to coordinate anti-Iran activities with the Rigi smuggler tribe in Pakistan, Amanollah-Khan Rigi -- a CIA scamster who operates in the same fashion as Chalabi -- and Nasr, a pseudo-scholar linked to the Iranian royalists abroad.

Holbrooke's strategy is already having a boomerang effect in Uzbekistan and Russia. It turns out that Abdolmalek Rigi was to give ex-Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan guerillas at the Manas Airbase a pep talk in their native Dari language before heading into the volatile Fergana valley of Tajikistan to engage in training activities on behalf of the CIA. The Russian and Uzbek intelligence services are now aware of the CIA operation and are taking actions to counter it.

Playing three card monte with airplanes

Capture of Rigi may be part of wider energy politics in region.

The February 23 capture by Iran of the CIA-backed Jundallah Baluchi terrorist leader Abdolmalek Rigi when his plane was forced to land in Bandar Abbas airport in Iran is raising more questions about the role of Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan in the operation.

Published news reports appear to be exercises in disinformation by the western corporate media and the Iranian and Pakistani media. At least two planes appear to have been involved in the Iranian capture of Rigi and some of his associates.

A story was floated by the neocon-oriented Daily Telegraph of the UK on February 24 that indicated that Rigi was forced off a Kyrgyzstan Airways flight from Dubai to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The flight was said to have carried 119 passengers, including Rigi, when Iranian agents on board forced the plane to land at Bandar Abbas, Iran, where Rigi was taken into custody by four masked elite troops of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (see below). However, the photograph shopped around by the media, including the Iranian media, shows Rigi being taken off a plane that is much smaller than the Kyrgyzstan flight QH454 that normally flies the route between Dubai and Bishkek. The small plane pictured below resembles a small jet, possibly a Lear or Dassault Falcon. KYRGYZSTAN's fleet includes 3 Antonov AN-24s, 1 Tupolev TU-134a, and 2 Yakovlev YAK-40s.

The "QH" flight designator is for KYRGYZSTAN, not "Kyrgyzstan Airlines" as reported by the Telegraph. There is another airline, "Kyrgyzstan Airlines, that flies from Islamabad, Pakistan to Bishkek but it does not fly to Dubai as does KYRGYZSTAN. Kyrgyzstan Airlines uses the flight designator of "R8." Kyrgyzstan Airlines' fleet consists of two Airbuses, six Antonovs, one Boeing 737, five Tupolevs, one Ilyushin IL-76TD, and two Yakovlevs.

There is also an aircraft marking difference between the small plane from which Rigi is removed and KYRGYZSTAN. The small plane bears blue, white, and red striping while KYRGYZSTAN planes bear a solid red stripe (see far below).

The mystery of how Rigi was captured remains murky with even DebkaFile of Israel, seen as close to the Mossad, unable to report more than the following: "The sparse details filtering through from Dubai and Tehran by Wednesday morning, Feb. 24, indicate that Abdol Malek Rigi boarded Kyrgyzstan Airways flight QH454 bound from Dubai for Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, on Tuesday. He was not traveling with bodyguards. A group of Iranian special operatives were among the 119 passengers. The flight was intercepted as soon as it crossed into Iranian airspace near Bandar Abbas and forced by an Iranian warplane to land at a military air base.ital of Kyrgyzstan, on Tuesday." DebkaFile concedes that the Iranians pulled off a masterful operation in capturing Rigi.

Rigi being taken off plane by Iranian special forces at Bandar Abbas.

The Iranians are presumably not only finding out from Rigi the extent of the CIA's support for the anti-Iranian government Jundallah Baluchi movement in Pakistan but also how the CIA has armed and provided logistical support to anti-Pakistani Baluchi secessionists -- a fact that will further alienate Islamabad from Washington and help forge a new Pakistani-Iranian intelligence alliance.

Of particular interest to the Iranians and Pakistanis are the CIA's operations at the Shamshi airbase in Pakistan, control over which was ceded by Pakistan to the CIA in October 2001. Blackwater/Xe personnel also operate from the Shamshi base, an important air transit hub between the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Gulf and U.S. bases in Afghanistan.

The CIA's support for Iranian Baluchis operating against Tehran has also had the effect of restoring the Baluchi Liberation Army, with CIA munitions destined for the Jundallah guerrillas falling into the hands of Baluchi secessionists in Pakistan, particularly among the Bugti, Marri and Mengal tribes that now threaten to disrupt trans-Pakistani pipelines to the Pakistani port of Gwadar, which is being developed by Chinese engineers and construction companies. The CIA, apparently unable or unwilling to distinguish between the Iranian and Baluchis and their agendas, permitted explosives and detonators destined for use in Iran to be used against regular Pakistani army units and Chinese assets assisting in the Gwadar port project.

Pakistan also suspects American energy politics at play. By stirring up Baluchis on both sides of the Pakistani-Iranian border, the CIA stands to disrupt planned natural gas pipelines from Qatar to Pakistan that will transit through Iran and the Iran-Gujarat oil pipeline.

WMR's intelligence sources have provided a best guess scenario for what occurred in regard to Rigi and his capture by the Iranians. Our sources state that Iranian intelligence is claiming very loudly that they captured Rigi without any foreign assistance. This apepars to be for cover satrory purposes. If ISI delivered him to Bandar Abbas aboard a Lear, the Iranians had at least a half day to arrange for the touchdown of the KYRGYZSTAN Dubai-Manas flight to cover up the actual flight from Gwadar. If the Iranians had a couple of their agents pretend to be Rigi they fooled the world and allowed Pakistan's ISI to get off the hook as far as their involvement was concerned. Rigi was reported not to be traveling with bodyguards from Dubai to Bishkek, which does not explain the detention of another individual, reported by some sources to have been Jundallah's "number two man."

Passengers on the KYRGYZSTAN flight diverted to Bandar Abbas claimed that two men were removed by Iranian agents. The passengers assumed that one was Rigi. However, informed observers in the region now believe that the passenger plane diversion was a cover for the delivery of Rigi by the ISI to Iranian hands.

There is also a possibility that Iranian agents gained access to a CIA contractor charter flight from Gwadar to Dubai, commandeered the flight to Bandar Abbas, and grabbed Rigi. Oddly enough, a U.S.-based charter aircraft company does operate from Gwadar Airport, Stratos Jet Charters, which provides Citations, Beechjets, Lears, Hawkers, Falcons, Challengers or Gulfstreams. The firm is headquartered in Orlando, Florida.

The U.S. arming of the Iranian Baluchis is part of a CIA covert program to stir up Iran's ethnic minorities, including Kurds, Arabs in Khuzestan, Azeris, Turkomen, as well as Baluchis. Last November, the American Friends of Balochistan (AFB) organized a conference in support of Baluchistan at the National Press Club in Washington. The Washington event was reported to have had links to the CIA.

One major question that remains is why was Rigi traveling to the U.S. airbase at Manas, Kyrgyzstan some two days after meeting with senior U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan and, reportedly, Pakistan? It is something Iranian intelligence is keen to discover.