US, Saudi Arabia ‘responsible’ for abduction of Iranian

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tuesday Washington and Riyadh are responsible for the abduction of an Iranian national in Saudi Arabia.

“Based on evidence that we have at our disposal, the Americans had a role in abducting Shahram Amiri,” Mottaki said in a joint press conference with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdallah Bin Zayid Al Nahyan.

“Therefore, we expect the US government to return him,” Mottaki said. “Saudi Arabia is also responsible regarding this issue.”

Amiri, a researcher at the University of Malek Ashtar, went missing in Saudi Arabia while on a pilgrimage visit earlier this year. He is among several Iranian nationals who Tehran says have been illegally detained by US authorities.

The US revealed earlier in December that Amir-Hossein Ardebili, an Iranian national who went missing in Georgia two years ago, was being held in a prison in Philadelphia.

The Georgian government handed him over to the US authorities in 2008.

Ardebili, who has faced trial in the US for allegedly seeking to buy spare parts for Iran’s F-4 fighter jets, is due to be sentenced in a Delaware court on December 14.

During the Tuesday press conference, Mottaki said Ardebili’s abduction was a “prefabricated scenario,” adding that the charges against him were “irrational and against international laws.”