dagblog - Comments for "U.S. disrupts Iranian-backed plot to kill Saudi ambassador"

Iranian-American gets 25

artappraiser — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 08:05:30 +0000

In reply to U.S. disrupts Iranian-backed plot to kill Saudi ambassador

Iranian-American gets 25 years in plot to kill Saudi ambassador
By Chris Boyette, CNN, June 2, 2013

New York (CNN) -- An Iranian-American who pleaded guilty to participating in a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison.

Attorneys for Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, wanted a 10-year sentence, but U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan agreed with the prosecution's recommendation of 25 years.

Prosecutors said Arbabsiar tried to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to bomb a Washington restaurant where Saudi Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir dined. But the scheme unraveled when Arbabsiar's cartel contact turned out to be an undercover agent [.....]

Guilty Plea In Plot To Murder

artappraiser — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:26:41 +0000

In reply to U.S. disrupts Iranian-backed plot to kill Saudi ambassador

Guilty Plea In Plot To Murder Saudi Ambassador
by Mark Memmott, NPR, October 17, 2012 4:34 PM

[....]

According to the FBI, "Gholam Shakuri, aka 'Ali Gholam Shakuri,' a co-conspirator and Iran-based member of the Qods Force ... who was also charged in the plot, remains at large." He's presumably in Iran.

Iranian officials have accused the U.S. of fabricating the plot.

Arbabsiar "faces a maximum potential sentence of 25 years in prison (10 years on counts one and two, and five years on count three)," Justice says. He is to be sentenced in January.

Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Murder a Saudi Envoy
By BENJAMIN WEISER, New York Times, October 17/18, 2012

[....]

Mr. Arbabsiar’s plea came days before a hearing at which Judge Keenan was to have considered a motion by Mr. Arbabsiar’s lawyers to suppress statements he made after being taken into custody on Sept. 29, 2011.

The authorities have said that Mr. Arbabsiar knowingly and voluntarily waived his rights to a lawyer and to a speedy court presentment during his first 12 days in custody, and had “confessed to his own role in the plot to kill the ambassador and provided extremely valuable intelligence.” He was eventually taken before a judge on Oct. 11, 2011.

In court on Wednesday, a prosecutor, Edward Y. Kim, said that the government’s proof included Mr. Arbabsiar’s “extensive” post-arrest statements.

In seeking the suppression of the statements or dismissal of charges, Ms. Shroff, the defense lawyer, cited findings by two defense experts who had diagnosed bipolar disorder in her client.

But a University of Virginia psychiatrist retained by the government, Dr. Gregory B. Saathoff, had concluded that Mr. Arbabsiar did not suffer from bipolar disorder or other mental illness that would have prevented him from knowingly consenting to questioning without a lawyer.

There was no suggestion in Mr. Arbabsiar’s plea agreement that he has any deal to cooperate with the government. Dr. Saathoff’s report notes that Mr. Arbabsiar expressed pride in his role as a car salesman, and that he even suggested a way to resolve his case. “I have spent my life making deals,” he quoted Mr. Arbabsiar as saying. “If America wants to make a deal with me, they can do it.”

Psychiatrist Details Talks

artappraiser — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 04:53:26 +0000

In reply to U.S. disrupts Iranian-backed plot to kill Saudi ambassador

Psychiatrist Details Talks With Suspect in Bomb Plot
By Benjamin Weiser, New York Times, October 4/5, 2012

He has been seen as something of an unlikely if stumbling terrorism suspect, a used-car salesman from Texas accused of being the American nexus of a global terrorism plot that called for assassinating the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

But the suspect, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American who has been jailed pending trial, recently told a psychiatrist that he had an idea about how he might resolve his legal troubles, a new report shows.

“I have spent my life making deals,” Mr. Arbabsiar was quoted as saying. “If America wants to make a deal with me, they can do it.” He added: “If you want information, I will give you information. If you want addresses, I will give you addresses.”

[....]

Prosecutors have said that after his arrest on Sept. 29, 2011, Mr. Arbabsiar waived his right to a lawyer and confessed to his role in the plot. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers, citing findings by two other experts that he was suffering from bipolar disorder, have asked that his statements be suppressed or the case be dismissed.

It was in that context that Dr. Gregory B. Saathoff, a University of Virginia psychiatrist retained by the government, began meeting with Mr. Arbabsiar at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and prepared a report of his findings.

[....]

Dr. Saathoff’s report, filed this week in Federal District Court in Manhattan, offers rich new detail about Mr. Arbabsiar’s life and thinking, much of it purportedly through his own words.

[....]

Judge Sets Trial Date in

artappraiser — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:36:28 +0000

In reply to U.S. disrupts Iranian-backed plot to kill Saudi ambassador

Judge Sets Trial Date in Alleged Plot to Kill Saudi Official
By Benjamin Weiser, New York Times, February 7, 2012

Citing delays in the case of an Iranian-American man charged in a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, a federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday set a trial date of Oct. 22 and said that he wanted “to get this case on track.”

The defendant, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, a used-car salesman from Corpus Christi, Tex., has been in custody since his arrest on Sept. 29 at Kennedy International Airport. The case has helped fuel tensions between the United States and Iran, and is expected to lead to a legal challenge over the statements he was said to have made voluntarily during 12 days of interrogation [....]

Remember the ruthless

Qnonymous — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 03:49:00 +0000

In reply to Remember when the Defense

Remember the ruthless efficiency and impossible to convert Commies? Maaaaan, now THEY were worthy opponents, eh? Back in the day. Great accents, too. And then, whoosh poosh, turns out they were all incompetent buffoons who could be converted to capitalism and democracy by a coupla bottles of Coke. Still. Them Revolutionary Guards sound scary. Almost as much as Saddam's Guards. {shiver}

Remember when the Defense

acanuck — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 03:30:00 +0000

In reply to But, Lulu, the government

Remember when the Defense Department was accusing Iran of killing U.S. troops by supplying IEDs to Iraqi militias. The argument was that the "shaped charges" being used were too sophisticated to be made in Iraq, so they had to have come from Iran.

Then they raided an arms workshop and found -- guess what? -- dozens of shaped charges at various stages of completion. So that line of complaint, which up till then had fueled pundit outrage, vanished overnight. Not a peep from the experts and analysts about how they'd all bought this load of BS. Memory hole.

I recall Colin Powell at the United Nations, holding up a vial of baby powder and describing how, if it were toxin X or Y, it could kill everybody in the room, or New York, or the world. As if that were evidence of anything, except the poor quality of the State Department's dramatic writing department.

Your government lies to you, people. And to the world. Routinely.

The only difference is that you, the American people, routinely believe them. The rest of the world laughs, and shakes its head ruefully. "There they go again." But the humor is starting to wear thin.

But, Lulu, the government

acanuck — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 03:05:53 +0000

In reply to The term, "Credible

But, Lulu, the government looked very carefully at the evidence and they're still convinced -- really, really convinced -- that the Iranians did it. Or tried to do it. Who are we to argue? What are we, commies?

The term, "Credible

A Guy Called LULU — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 01:54:13 +0000

In reply to the facts as stated require a

The term, "Credible deniability" was coined to describe ludicrous claims that were incredibly hard to believe but ones that, as long as they were possible, so called credible but duplicitous people could make with a straight face and still keep their incredibly lucrative jobs while [almost certainly] punking the public with the protection provided by a lie. I cannot think of a handy concise term to use for a corollary, maybe, "Incredible but possible assertion".
All we are asked to believe is that the international bad guys are uniquely deadly and dangerous and evil and bloodthirsty [they will actually kill people and risk killing innocents for their purposes] and incredibly smart and devious, while also being incredibly amateurish, often to to point of stupidity, while at the same same time our intelligence services are incredibly competent, never devious, always above-board, and also are on one hell of a lucky streak.
An example is the computer bombs sent from Yemen. So cleverly designed and demonstrative of the grave high tech capabilities of our backward terrorist enemies that they could have worked but were apparently part of such an intricate plan that for some diabolical reason they were set to not explode. It was suggested the bad guys just wanted to be sure that the delivery service would actually take the bombs to the address that was on them before setting the triggers on the next shipment. And how did we know just where to find the computer bombs in the nick of time that had been shipped by common carrier? From a tip by an insider to the terrorist operation sent to the Saudis who passed it on to us. What luck!, the tip included a tracking number. At least that is the incredible story we were told, when, to try to make this incredible story believable to a credible public, our brilliant agents who saved us again let that be known. They incredibly let let the incredible idea be known that someone on the inside of what was most likely a very small group ratted on the bad guys to our benefit. A rat that was in a position to know the tracking number. I wonder how the following days of this extremely valuable, to us, terrorist group insider went after that? If he even existed, that is. One way or another, he doesn't now. Or maybe he does, but that would be hard to believe.
How many plots have been discovered through incredible luck. Any one of them could have played out the way we are told but the odds that so many did so are getting pretty long.
The Saudi ambassador's death would have had no more operational significance if he had died of a heart attack. There was no reason to kill him except to make a statement. Its purpose could not have been to foil some operation or break up some group. Its purpose had to be to make a statement, to start something. [Like a war, maybe?] For it to have been an Iranian plot and for it to have benefited them after being successful they would have had to openly take credit or else have had to successfully made the killing look like it was done by someone else, depending on their devious intent.
Nobody seems to think they could have had any chance of the killing not traced back to them if it had gone through to its [alleged] intended end. If we give them credit for not being such morans that they thought they could pull off a moronic plot and make the world think someone else did it, then we must think that they wanted the killing to happen with the intention of the world knowing they did it and that they wanted the consequences that would result. I suppose that is incredibly possible.
I don't have to think that the Iranians are all good guys, operatives who are all above pulling off black ops or false flag operations, to think of alternate scenarios that are, in this case, easier to believe, scenarios in which other actors from other countries are more likely responsible.

the facts as stated require a

jollyroger — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:23:44 +0000

In reply to U.S. disrupts Iranian-backed plot to kill Saudi ambassador

the facts as stated require a substantial suspension of disbelief. we are called upon to accept the remarkable good fortune that the precise zeta chosen as conspirator was a previously compromised informant and that the iranian agent did so little of vetting that this fact escaped him.

I wouldn't rule out the

Verified Atheist — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:16:03 +0000

In reply to My impression of the Persians

I wouldn't rule out the Revolutionary Guard, Mossad, or the CIA. With respect to the Revolutionary Guard, all organizations have their screw-ups. As for "the Persians" being "not at all nuts", that I'm going to have to challenge. All humans (and many non-humans) are nuts.