Iran's Most Wanted

[DRoshani]

Ahmadinejad's choice for defense minister is sought by Interpol for
planning the bombing of an Argentine synagogue.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 24, 2009, at 2:01 PM ET

Ahmad Vahidi
President Obama has said that he wants "the Islamic Republic of Iran"
to be welcomed back into the "community of nations." Unfortunately, it
is precisely the fact that it is an Islamic republic that excludes it
from such consideration. A pointed reminder of this was provided last
week, when the country's dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, freshly
blooded from his recent military coup, nominated his choice of defense
minister. This turns out to be Ahmad Vahidi, who if confirmed will be
the only holder of the defense portfolio in the world to be
simultaneously wanted by Interpol.

Vahidi used to head the so-called "Quds Force," a shadowy arm of the
"Revolutionary Guards" that conducts covert operations overseas. In
1994, according to an Argentine indictment adopted by Interpol's "red
list" or "most wanted" index, he was one of those responsible for
"conceiving, planning, financing and executing" the demolition of the
Jewish community's cultural center in Buenos Aires. There were 85
deaths and hundreds of injuries. Among the five other named co-
conspirators in this atrocity were Mohsen Rezaee, formerly the head of
the Revolutionary Guards and more recently a candidate for the
presidency, and the late Imad Mugniyeh, the Damascus-based leader of
Hezbollah's military wing, itself a declared proxy of the Islamic
Republic.
At the time, Interpol's Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble said that "a
red notice chills travel—limits travel—and places the government in
power at risk of explaining why a person for whom a red notice is
issued is able to move freely." A different version of this very point
occurred with particular force to Canada's foreign minister in 2006.
His office noticed that a certain Saeed Mortazavi was scheduled to
travel from Iran, via Frankfurt, to Geneva. Mortazavi was then and
still is Tehran's much-detested and feared prosecutor-general, in
which capacity he oversaw the rape and murder of a Canadian citizen, a
photojournalist named Zahra Kazemi, in 2003. He had also freed her
rapists and murderers after two independent commissions had found them
responsible. (Need I add that Mortazavi was en route to Geneva as a
member of Iran's official delegation to the Human Rights Council?)
Foreign Minister Peter MacKay telephoned his counterparts to try to
have Mortazavi arrested and extradited to Canada, but he wasn't quite
quick enough.

Read more at: http://www.slate.com/id/2226110/