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.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
"The Rigis of Baluchistan" are actually the Rigis of the Shah's royal court and neocon swindlers
Friday, February 26, 2010
Iran carried out "two-plane" Rigi mission to embarrass Obama's Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke
The government and intelligence services of Iran apparently have quite a sense of humor. Iran has managed not only to nab a top CIA-backed Baluchi terrorist but it also was able to keep the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan waiting for Abdolmalek Rigi in Bishkek. The Iranians, in a clever move, captured Rigi from the Pakistanis aboard a Pakistan to Dubai small commuter jet aircraft, while the world believed Rigi was taken off a Kyrgyzstan airline flight from Dubai to Bishkek that was forced to land by Iranian Air Force jets at Bandar Abbas in Iran.
With the entire highly-vaunted U.S. intelligence community at his disposal, Holbrooke and his State Department and CIA team were forced to resort to dealing with Bishkek-Manas airport officials when their Iranian-Baluchi Jundallah guerrillas leader failed to show up in Bishkek on the Kyrgyzstan aircraft from Dubai.
On February 24, 2010, WMR reported, "Our sources state that Iranian intelligence is claiming very loudly that they captured Rigi without any foreign assistance. This appears to be for cover story purposes. If ISI delivered him to Bandar Abbas aboard a Lear [or Falcon], 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.'"
According to Iranian state TV, Rigi drove in his Toyota from his house on Sariab Street in Kuwaiteh in Pakistan on February 21, leaving at 0955 local time and arriving in Chaman on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at 1300 the same day. After crossing the border and arriving in Spin Boldak, Rigi was met by a local contact team and taken to Kandahar airbase where final arrangements were made for him to fly to Bishkek to meet with Holbrooke. At some point in time, possibly before February 21, Rigi was given a fake Afghanistan passport under the name "Mohammad Khalib." Rigi was also given a fake Pakistani travel document.
But it is at this point in time where the Iranian cover story begins. Iranian TV reported that on February 22, Rigi flew from Kandahar to Kabul for a brief layover before boarding Ariana Airlines flight 401 to Dubai. The Iranians report that Rigi arrived in Dubai at 2000 local time. Rigi reportedly spent a short time in Dubai before boarding Kyrgyzstan 454 to Bishkek. The Iranians claim that the Kyrgyzstan flight, once entering Iranian airspace, was forced to land in Bandar Abbas, where Rigi was taken into custody.
In an interview on Iranian TV, Rigi saus he was flying to Bishkek to meet an "important" American. The reason for the clandestine meeting in Manas was that the American would be easily spotted if he met Rigi anywhere else.
At the time of the planned meeting between Rigi and the "important" American, AF-PAK Special Envoy Holbrooke was on a meandering journey in central Asia and Afghanistan "without a fixed schedule." Holbrooke was in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on February 19.
Holbrooke landed in Manas on February 19 and spoke to U.S. troops at the Manas Transit Center. Holbrooke then left for Afghanistan but arrived back in Manas on February 21, the day before the planned meeting with Rigi. The official story of Holbrooke's return to Kyrgyzstan was for an official meeting with Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Iran conducted the charade with the Kyrgyzstan airline in order to keep Holbrooke waiting nervously at Manas. Iran had already captured their prize of Rigi when the ISI, possibly after Rigi's departure from Kuwaiteh or after he crossed into Afghanistan, took him under their protection and put him on the charter jet flight to Bandar Abbas. Possibly, ISI was at Spin Boldak and Rigi mistakenly believed the watch team was working for the CIA, when, in fact, they were working for the ISI, which had promised to turn Rigi over to the Iranians.
WMR's Asia-based intelligence sources believe that the Iranians discovered the plans for Rigi's movement to Kandahar and replaced the pre-positioned CIA team sent to meet Rigi. Another scenario is that Rigi was to be flown to Dubai from Gwadar on board a CIA-ISI charter plane after being convoyed by an American team, along with Pakistani minders, from the Shamshi airbase in Pakistan. Rigi and the Americans believed Rigi would be flown to Dubai for his connecting flight to Bishkek-Manas to meet the American VIP.
Pakistani agents on the plane then order the pilot to change course for Bandar Abbas, telling him it is a classified Pakistani military mission. The plane lands in Bandar Abbas and Rigi is taken into custody. Meanwhile, Holbrooke and his party become concerned when Kyrgyzstan 454 is late. When the flight arrives, Holbrooke is told Rigi is not on board the flight and that two men were taken off the plane at Bandar Abbas. Holbrooke, clearly embarrassed and angry, departs Kyrgyzstan knowing the Iranians have nabbed one of the CIA's top assets in the military operations being planned against Iran. Holbrooke, one of the most powerful American Jewish Zionists in the Obama administration, has egg all over his face, courtesy of a well-planned Iranian intelligence operation. Holbrooke flies to Tbilisi, Georgia and visits the Krtsanisi Military Training Center to thank Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili for providing 1000 Georgian troops for Afghanistan. It was all Holbrooke could do to help cover up a major defeat for American intelligence operations in the region.
Iran and the CIA/State Department, for their own reasons, immediately go into spin mode. The Obama administration, caught with its pants down, denies the U.S. supports Rigi's Jundallah movement, which has carried out a series of terrorist attacks in southeastern Iran. Iran, wishing to protect Pakistan's involvement in the capture of Jundallah's leader, creates another cover story.
On February 26, Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made an extremely rare visit to Damascus to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Nasrallah, who is always in fear of Israeli assassination, was jovial and even seen laughing along with Ahmadinejad and Assad. Undoubtedly, the three were laughing about how Iran not only managed to avenge the assassination by Mossad of top Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai hotel on January 19 but also managed to have Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy, sweating it out at Manas-Bishkek airport in the middle of central Asia, waiting for Rigi who was already a "guest" of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
Pakistan's ambassador to Tehran Mohammad Abbasi is quoted by The Daily Times of Pakistan as stating on February 24, "I must tell you that such action cannot be carried out without the cooperation of Pakistan. I am happy that he has been arrested."
“I must tell you that such action cannot be carried out without the cooperation of Pakistan. I am happy that he has been arrested,” he told a media conference.
Holbrooke, the master of nation-splitting after his success in dismantling Yugoslavia, is seen as trying to accomplish a similar outcome for Pakistan and Iran by supporting secessionist groups like Rigi's Jundallah Baluchi movement. Holbrooke's angst while waiting for Rigi in Kyrgyzstan is sure to bring a few smiles to some people in Serbia who still blame him for the break-up of that nation.
A "slightly fictional" account of Iran's takedown of CIA's Baluchi operative
The CIA definitely has egg on its face over the Iranian VEVAK intelligence operation that nabbed Langley's top Iranian Baluchi guerrilla commander in Pakistan and his subsequent arrest in Iran. With all the sordid details being revealed about the CIA's proprietary Blackwater/Xe/Paravant "cowboy" operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, the following "slightly fictionalized" account of the capture by Iran of Baluchi operative Abdolmalek Rigi by WMR's Asian journalist colleague who has covered events in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India for a number of years could be the screenplay for a movie titled: "The Frigging of Rigi"
Jundallah, the CIA's Iranian Baluchi terrorist group, says its leader Abdolmalek Rigi was betrayed by the United States, United Kingdom, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Perhaps the CIA should teach its would-be guerrillas to watch not only their backs but also both sides. The CIA is reportedly flummoxed by the actions of Iran's VEVAK intelligence service, as well as Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) in the capture of their main man who launched terrorist attacks in eastern Iran to soften up the Persians before the deadly U.S. and Israeli body blow. Here is the "how-to-reshuffle-the-deck Persian-style."
So the Persians, via their intermediaries on the ground know Rigi's destination, the
schedule of his meeting with the American VIP in Bishkek, and the arrangements, and they nod their heads and prepare two receptions at Bandar Abbas . . . meanwhile . . .
Through the gates of Shamshi, a small convoy of Americans, military and "civilian", together with their Pakistani minders, accompany Rigi to Gwadar Airport for the cross-Gulf hop to Dubai Airport, where he is to transit with a fake Afghanistan passport and a bogus Pakistani travel document to Bishkek-Manas.
The Americans wave from the tarmac as a small charter jet takes Rigi with his Pakistani
escorts to Dubai. The Pakistanis are along for the ride to ensure that Rigi doesn't bolt in Dubai for a local girlie bar but gets on the flight to Bishkek, since "Mr. Big" is waiting for him specially at the U.S. airbase at Manas.
The flight flies low and switches off radio contact to evade potentially hostile radar. The Pakistani escorts then divvy up the work. One orders Rigi and his pal to stay in their
seats, the other goes to the cockpit with new destination. The pilot says "What?" The
Pakistani answers "Top Secret Mission, part of the U.S. plan. Our men are on the ground
in Bandar. Just a delivery, a small detour."
The small jet lands on the spacious strip. The Pakistanis push Rigi and pal out the door with a huge "whew" and "good riddance, you Baluch camel shit!"
The smiling Iranians greet Rigi: "Welcome to Iran. You are now a guest of the Revolutionary Guards. Everything will be taken care of."
While the air crew and the Pakistanis go for a cup of coffee, the happy Iranians put
on their masks for the photo op next to the small jet with their 'trophy." And then they
whisk Rigi and his accomplice to a small "hotel room" for a series of "chats."
Next, the Pakistanis and the air crew return to the plane to resume the flight to
Dubai. In the passenger seats are two men - ah, they took a piss, smoked a
cigarette and are back, "OK, let's go."
Under the radar, the small jet dashes across the Gulf to make up for lost time and then lands at Dubai International. The Pakistanis thank the charter jet captain, who decides to have some drinks and spend the night with a hooker across "the Creek." A job
well done deserves a reward.
The Pakistanis now take "Rigi and friend" to Departures. "Oh, I nearly forgot, I've been holding the passports. Here you go. Have fun, Iranian girls are oooh-la-la!"
The Pakistanis head to a local hotel to ogle the Lebanese hookers.
"Rigi Junior and Friend Junior" go through immigration, and then board Kyrgyzstan flight 454. "Too bad we're not going to Kyrgyzstan, I hear those Uzbek girls are oooh-la-la. Iranian girls make for a good wife, but I hear as girlfriends they've got expensive tastes."
"Ahmed, my young friend, after this performance you will be able to have two wives, one Punjabi and the second a Pashtun!"
"Oh, Jamal, that would be a real war. The Pastuni would have to be No.1. Their women are crazy and violent!"
"Ahmed, do you suppose they serve drinks aboard this flight?"
"You mean halal vodka?" Both laugh.
By now the plane is already descending - on schedule, if you happen to be an
impostor with the ISI.
The other passengers are chattering. "Isn't that's an island in the Gulf?" "Engine problems, oh no!" "Do you think we're going to crash?"
Prayer beads are clicking, one woman is sobbing hysterically. "Calm down, my dear, probably just a minor mechanical problem," an older businessman from Bahrain reassures the hysterical woman from Kyrgyzstan.
Smooth landing and then the plane idles on tarmac. Several uniformed Iranians with small arms board the plane, looking intensely at the passengers and then spot "Abbott and Costello."
"If you gentlemen will accompany us."
"Oh, my Allah! Terrorists aboard our plane!" says the overweight babushka from Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city.
"You are in no danger, madam. Everything is under control. Have a nice flight to
Kyrgyzstan," replies the Iranian security officer.
Meanwhile, the Iranian security officer in the cockpit reminds the air crew: "This is a routine exercise. We're not supposed to discuss details over radio. Your supervisor in Manas is already informed of details. Thank you, gentleman. Have a good journey, Ins'Allah!"
At Manas, a U.S. Embassy staffer is reading Time magazine in a VIP Lounge. "Don't
worry, the ragheads are always running late. The only ones who every show up on
time are the Taliban."
His Grey Eminence is bored. This is the worse VIP Lounge I've ever seen. Built with USAID money, too. I know, corruption as usual, he muses to himself.
The plane reaches the gate. The reception team waits. "Is that all the passengers?
Can you check the manifest for a Mr. Rigi?"
"We're sorry, sir, the record indicates he boarded in Dubai. He must've slipped past you."
The Americans rush down to the baggage carousel. The passengers are all gone by now. "What the . . . your mobile. What's the country code for Afghanistan?"
Mr. CIA shouts over his mobile phone: "Hey, there, did the package get into the mail? Yes? Double check the postage? Yes? Well, it never arrived!"
Back at the lounge. "Sir, there's been some sort of mix up. We've got a guy checking with the air crew."
Incoming cell phone call from another "Mr. CIA" at the airport: "Dude, just checked with a pilot. They landed in Bandar Abbas. Two passengers were taken off the plane."
"Oh, shit. Excuse me, sir. Our contact can't make it. Sends his apologies. Maybe you should take an earlier flight to Tbilisi."
"Goddammit, can't you people get anything right? What the fuck are we going to do now. Don't let this get out or you're going to be running PR in Helmand. Get me on that flight NOW!"
The junior agent was flipping channels between BBC and Al-Jazeera in the VIP lounge, waiting for the bad news to arrive.
On the flight to Tbilisi, where Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili would provide a little cover by announcing that he was sending 1000 of his "crack" presidential security troops to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, could only think of the dressing down he was going to get for Rigi being snatched by the infernal Iranians.
There would be the deep Hebrew-accented remonstration from Mossad chief Meir Dagan. But the worst would come from White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who would let loose a volley of four-letter epithets on Holbrooke: "Godammit Holbrooke! This delays our Iran military action and how will I explain this royal-ass fuckup to Bibi after his recent success in snuffng that Hamas asshole in Dubai?"
Holbrooke's evening in Tbilisi could be called "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia."
For Abdolmalek Rigi, the refrain would be "Don't trust your soul to no Presidential Harvard lawyer. Cause the judge in Tehran's got bloodstains on his hand."
Meanwhile, hidden away somewhere deep inside a forest dwelling in the Serb Republic of Bosnia, wanted former Bosnian Serb Army Commander Ratko Mladic raises a shot glass of slivovka plum brandy at the news he's just received from his contacts about Holbrooke's embarrassment in Manas. Before pounding down the shot, he boasts: "Good, that bastard got what's coming to him!"
NOTE: Although slightly fictionalized, someone didn't want this posted on the web. The piece was lost in transmission twice.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Playing three card monte with airplanes
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.