Reuters: The Iranian authorities are trying to discover what has happened to a U.S. citizen who Washington said it believed went missing several weeks ago while on private business in Iran, an Iranian official said on Sunday. TEHRAN (Reuters) – The Iranian authorities are trying to discover what has happened to a U.S. citizen who Washington said it believed went missing several weeks ago while on private business in Iran, an Iranian official said on Sunday.
The United States sent an official inquiry about the missing former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, to Iran earlier this month via Swiss diplomats, who act as go-betweens with Tehran because the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.
“The relevant organizations are following the case to find clear news about his fate,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a weekly news conference.
Hossein Zolfaqari, deputy head of the Islamic Republic Law Enforcement Forces, said on Saturday he had “no information about the disappearance of the American citizen,” according to the official IRNA news agency, monitored by the BBC.
The missing man, described by officials as middle-aged, is believed to have been visiting Kish, an Iranian resort island and free trade zone in the Gulf. He is not believed to be of Iranian descent and his wife lives in the United States.
“A local official in Kish Island in south of Iran said last week that no firm evidence on the American citizen’s entrance to the island have been obtained,” the IRNA report said.
The United States has been looking into the case for weeks, trying to establish whether Levinson may have been picked up by the Iranians or someone linked to the Russian mafia. So far it has no definite leads.
