AP: The State Department on Thursday renewed its calls for Iran to find out what happened to a former FBI agent who went missing on an Iranian island last year and has not been heard from since. The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) The State Department on Thursday renewed its calls for Iran to find out what happened to a former FBI agent who went missing on an Iranian island last year and has not been heard from since.
Nearly 10 months after Robert Levinson disappeared on Kish Island in uncertain circumstances in March 2007, the State Department said neither the U.S. government nor Levinson’s wife, who went to Iran in December, hoping to find clues about her husband’s whereabouts, had gotten any new information about the case.
“We urge the government of Iran to increase its efforts to investigate this case and to share information they have uncovered with the Levinson family and Swiss officials so it can be communicated back to the United States government and through official channels,” spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Iran as Washington and Tehran do not have diplomatic relations.
Levinson’s wife, Christine, along with two other family members, traveled from Dec. 18-23 to Iran, where they were assisted by Swiss diplomats but unable to shed more light on the matter.
They determined that Levinson had checked out of his hotel on Kish Island on March 9 and caught a taxi to the nearby airport but nothing beyond that, Christine Levinson told reporters at a Dec. 22 news conference in Tehran.
“It’s really at that point that the trail goes cold, after he leaves the hotel,” McCormack said, adding that Nicholas Burns, the State Department’s third highest-ranking diplomat, had spoken with Christine Levinson on Jan. 9.
Her 59-year-old husband, who retired from the FBI in 1998, was last seen March 8 on Kish, where he had gone to seek information on cigarette smuggling for a client of his security firm.
The Iranian government has said repeatedly that it is investigating the disappearance but does not know what happened to Levinson.
Christine Levinson said Iranian officials were cooperative, but she still believes her husband is in Iran because his name has not shown up on any flight manifests of planes leaving the country.
