Israel was abuzz with conspiracy theories on Tuesday that its spies could have been behind the mysterious disappearance in Turkey of a senior official from archfoe Iran.
Ali Reza Asghari, a deputy defence minister under Iran's former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, went missing in Istanbul in February three days after checking into a hotel there. Iran on Tuesday raised the possibility that he was abducted by Western intelligence services, the state IRNA agency reported from Tehran.
"It is possible that the former deputy defence minister, Asghari, was kidnapped by the Western secret services due to his past at the ministry of defence," said police chief Ismaeel Ahmadi Moghadam.
"Police investigations show that he did not leave Turkey and was not in any of the hospitals in that country," he added. Tehran said on Monday that it had dispatched a team of diplomats to investigate.
" Asghari disappeared during a recent trip to Turkey and the foreign ministry is following the affair, most notably by sending a consular mission," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.
"Iran is demanding explanations from the Turkish authorities." No official indications of Asghari's whereabouts or the reasons for his sudden disappearance have been given. But media in Israel have been filled with speculation about his fate.
On Tuesday, Israel ordered security tightened around its diplomatic missions world-wide, army radio reported, over fears that Iran could suspect the Jewish state of being involved in the disappearance.
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