Tehran’s chief prosecutor says the Iranian Judiciary has filed an indictment against 14 individuals for involvement in the 2020 assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Ali Salehi said on Sunday the charges brought against the individuals include “corruption on earth,” “participation in intelligence and espionage cooperation for the benefit of the Zionist regime,” “collusion with the aim of disrupting the security of the country,” and “acting against the country’s national security.”
Fakhrizadeh, the head of the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was targeted in a multi-pronged terrorist attack in Absard city of Tehran Province’s Damavand County on November 27, 2020.
Iranian officials said at the time that Israel was behind the assassination and had acted with US intelligence to carry out the targeted killing of the prominent nuclear scientist.
The New York Times reported almost a year after the assassination that Israel’s spying agency, Mossad, had used a remote-controlled “killer robot” to kill Fakhrizadeh after keeping the top scientist under surveillance “for at least 14 years.”
The American daily revealed that Israel had been closely following Fakhrizadeh’s career and movements since 2007 and began making preparations for an assassination operation in late 2019 and early 2020.
Tehran has vowed harsh revenge for the iconic scientist’s murder as well as for the killing of other Iranian luminaries.