5 Feb 2010 – Medya News — Tehran has called in Italian ambassador Alberto Bradanini over the arrest of two Iranians in Turin on suspicion of arms trafficking, Iranian news agencies reported on Friday.
“Italy’s ambassador was summoned Thursday evening to the foreign ministry to explain the reasons for the arrests,” foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying.
“The news published about the arrests reveals a new game which is aimed at creating distractions and ambiguities,” he added.
Leading Italian anti-terrorist prosecutor Armando Spataro said on Wednesday that two Iranians and five Italians had been arrested in Turin on suspicion of trafficking arms to Iran in violation of UN sanctions.
“It is an investigation of considerable importance because it concerns the entire international community,” said Mr Spataro of the nine-month operation, codenamed Sniper.
Lieutenant Colonel Vincenzo Andreone of the financial police, who led the operation, said that the probe scuppered a planned shipment to Iran of large quantities of anti-tank rockets and explosives.
Iran’s English daily, Tehran Times reported “Iranian television journalist Hamid Masoumi Nejad, based in Rome, along with another Iranian were detained on Wednesday on charges of smuggling arms and explosives to Iran.”
Quating the foreign Ministry official, Tehran Times considered the arrest of Iranian nationals as “a new play” being done with “ambiguous purposes” and said Masoumi Nejad had been arrested because he covered an “anti-racism demonstration in Italy” on Tuesday.
Spataro identified the Iranians arrested as Hamid Masoumi Nejad, 51, who was accredited as a journalist in Rome, and Homayoun Bakhtiyari 47.
Two other Iranians sought in the same operation are currently in Iran, Spataro added, and they were suspected members of the Iranian secret service.
It was conducted along with Swiss police as one of the suspects lived in Bern, he added.
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