Iranian dissident hunters | The Verge

On a balmy night time in October 2019, the defector rode his bike residence. He’d simply completed a protracted shift serving to waiters serve yogurt-smothered kabobs at a restaurant in Yalova, a seaside city an hour from Istanbul, Turkey. By this time of night time, most of the retailers had closed. Most of Yalova was residence watching TV; site visitors was sparse on the dimly lit streets. Earlier than he defected, Mohammad Rezaie had served 17 years in Iran’s naval providers. The navy had taught him vigilance, however currently he had extra causes to remain alert. Although he was now 1,500 miles away from Iran, the regime had not forgotten his betrayal.

Rezaie had educated as a gunner on ships, ultimately happening to coach different Navy sailors in radar navigation simulators. He fled in 2017 after being knowledgeable that he can be deployed to combat in Syria, the place a bloody, multifactional civil warfare had been raging for years. The regime in Tehran was supplying weapons and troops to Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and Rezaie can be one in every of many Iranian males despatched to assist Assad in retaining his grip on the nation. Rezaie didn’t wish to kill kids, and he definitely didn’t wish to combat one other nation’s warfare. However defecting isn’t with out its personal prices: since fleeing Iran, the previous naval officer has been simply scraping by, each financially and emotionally. He was lonely, brief on money, and on antidepressants.

That night time in Yalova, as Rezaie cycled residence via secluded alleys, a Mercedes whizzed previous him. He observed a number of males contained in the automobile looking at him. At six ft tall and 200 kilos, Rezaie usually doesn’t have a lot to concern, even on a darkish avenue. However one thing in regards to the state of affairs despatched pressure capturing via his physique. I’m being paranoid, he advised himself. Nonetheless, he pedaled sooner.

One other car, a BMW, pulled up alongside him. The passenger window rolled down, and Rezaie may make out a person in a go well with and tie, with a sharp beard and the define of a pot stomach. “Have you learnt me?” he requested Rezaie.

Rezaie did acknowledge him. The previous naval officer had seen him as soon as, weeks in the past, outdoors the kabob restaurant. At the moment, the stranger, dressed casually in a cap and T-shirt, had launched himself as Angel. The 2 males had shared a smoke, and Angel had even supplied to get Rezaie to the West — he had a overseas girlfriend, Angel had stated, and she or he may assist. It was a beneficiant, however suspect, provide. Rezaie knew higher than to belief a stranger promising to take him overseas. Rezaie had made his excuses and left Angel on the road, the cigarette nonetheless lit.

As Rezaie peered into the BMW, he realized that he additionally acknowledged the person within the driver’s seat. His identify was Ismail, and he’d been hanging across the kabob restaurant, too.

Days earlier, Ismail launched Rezaie to a fairly, platinum blonde American lady named Katherine. She’d visited the restaurant in ripped denims and a white button-down shirt. With brief hair and a full face of make-up, she appeared like a mannequin. Katherine had advised him, in English, that she would rent him to captain her ship for $10,000 a month. He may sail to Greece after which Europe. Was this Angel’s girlfriend? Perhaps the stranger’s provide wasn’t too good to be true. Rezaie had been impressed by Katherine and had even begun to hope that this was the place his life would flip round.

The directions: come to Tuzla, one other Turkish municipality, the place Katherine’s vessel was docked. Rezaie had requested to see the small print of the cargo ship. However after trying up the ship’s Worldwide Maritime Group quantity — akin to a license plate for a sea vessel — he had seen it was at one other location 60 miles from Tuzla. One thing had felt off. His suspicions raised, he had refused to go to Tuzla.

Within the days after, Rezaie’s doubts have been overtaken by his loneliness. Life in exile was depressing, an existence in limbo. So little had crammed his days besides the nervousness of ready for one thing, something, to occur. That night time, as he stared on the males within the BMW, deep down he needed very badly to imagine that they have been his mates — that they have been variety individuals who merely cared in regards to the plight of an Iranian refugee.

Finally, the voice of warning received out. Rezaie started to stroll his bike away from the BMW. However all of a sudden, the automobile reduce him off. Then Ismail and one other man — a slight determine with silver hair that Rezaie had not met earlier than however would later study was Ismail’s cousin, Erdal — exited the automobile. They’d reached a avenue nook close to a crowded cafe. The lads dashed towards Rezaie, who let go of his bike, letting it clatter because it fell to the bottom.

“Get within the automobile,” one of many males demanded. “We wish to discuss to you.”

His coronary heart pounding, Rezaie stood his floor, silently telling himself to remain calm.

Ismail stated that they have been there to save lots of Rezaie from a gaggle of assassins working for the Iranian regime that needed him useless.

The story was fantastical, however for an Iranian defector, it was not implausible. It wasn’t even the primary time that he’d heard this story within the final month. Rezaie had beforehand acquired threats from the regime, which is understood to kidnap and execute navy defectors — a stern warning for all its troops. Only a couple weeks earlier, a Yalova police officer had gone to Rezaie’s residence, saying a group was out to kidnap him.

The officer stated that he would shield Rezaie if he gave him $10,000. Rezaie had blown him off — grifts have been frequent amongst Turkish police. However the reappearance of Angel and Ismail, collectively, sparked contemporary alarm. Maybe they have been, actually, attempting to assist him — and maybe that Mercedes that Rezaie had noticed earlier was out to get him. Nonetheless, it was simply as believable that Angel and Ismail have been the abductors that the bribe-seeking officer had warned him about. All Rezaie knew at this level was that somebody was out to get him. So who was pal and who was foe?

Angel grew impatient. “Get within the automobile now!”

“I’m not coming with you guys,” Rezaie stated, laughing nervously. It was three towards one, however as he sized up his opponents, he took consolation in seeing that they have been older and fewer match. (Rezaie went to the gymnasium daily; understanding was one technique to stave off the uncertainty and loneliness of his new life.) The opposite males could have come to related conclusions about how they’d fare in a bodily confrontation. Ismail intervened, attempting to de-escalate the state of affairs. “Rezaie is my pal. I can persuade him,” he advised the others.

Ismail then turned to Rezaie, reminding him about Katherine, the gorgeous blonde whose suspicious ship Rezaie had declined to captain. She was truly a CIA agent, Ismail defined, who had employed them to convey Rezaie to the US consulate in Istanbul. She needed to take him to the US to save lots of him from the Iranian regime.

The entire story — that Katherine was within the CIA, that the CIA would care a few single sailor, that they’d inform him this on a avenue nook in the course of the night time — sounded ridiculous to Rezaie. However dismissing all the factor raised much more questions: why would Katherine, an American lady with no connections to Iran, conspire to hurt him? Nothing added up in both path.

Angel acquired out of the automobile. They have been now going to take a photograph collectively, he stated, to ship to Katherine. The lads posed collectively — Rezaie within the center, flanked by Erdal on his left and Angel on his proper, with their arms linked tight — staring unsmilingly at Ismail as he snapped the photograph.

“Get within the automobile. We wish to take one other image with you,” Angel stated.

Maybe it was resignation, maybe it was hope — or possibly the escalating strangeness of all of it had merely worn him down. This time, Rezaie complied.

Since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been identified for kidnapping and killing its critics at residence. However the regime has additionally turn out to be infamous for chasing down its dissidents overseas, from the US to France to the Netherlands. Iran is keenly conscious always {that a} single particular person can spark a revolution — in spite of everything, the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was as soon as an exile in France, earlier than main the trendy state of Iran as we now understand it.

In 2020, Jamshid Sharmahd, a 65-year-old Iranian German dissident residing in southern California, was on a layover in Dubai, UAE, when he was kidnapped by Iranian forces. Sharmahd was taken to Iran and placed on trial. Iran accused Sharmahd of planning an assault on a mosque that killed Iranians, sharing categorized navy data, and being a part of a terror group. Sharmahd’s household denied the fees.

Sharmahd was convicted and handed the demise penalty in October 2024. Germany closed its embassy in Tehran in response. Iran’s judiciary made a press release after his execution: “For sure, the divine promise relating to the supporters of terrorism might be fulfilled, and this can be a particular promise.”

Sharmahd was accused of main a pro-monarchy group that’s categorized was a terrorist group by the Iranian regime. As compared, navy defectors like Rezaie are small fries.

For Rezaie, like many Iranian dissidents fleeing their nation, step one was crossing the border into Turkey. However staying in Turkey is harmful — the Iranian regime has attain and connections in that nation that it doesn’t elsewhere. Nonetheless, Turkey nonetheless features as an opposition haven, internet hosting the most important variety of migrants — about 3.2 million, together with hundreds of asylum-seekers ready for resettlement to a 3rd nation.

There’s a superb purpose for this: Turkey is likely one of the few nations Iranians can journey to with out a visa. As for Iranian dissidents who’ve been banned from leaving their residence nation, they’ll rent smugglers to take them throughout the 332-mile border with Turkey. In 2018, greater than 4,000 Iranians crossed to Turkey illegally, and that quantity practically doubled by 2023. Since Israel began bombing Iran on June thirteenth and Iran’s airports closed, a whole bunch of Iranians are crossing by land into Turkey day by day. The regime accelerated its executions of suspected spies in Iran.

Security eludes them even after they escape. Iranian dissidents have been gunned down on the streets of Istanbul or kidnapped and brought again to Iran to be tried and later executed. An Iranian diplomat now sanctioned by the US was convicted in a Turkish courtroom of murdering Iranian cybersecurity professional Masoud Molavi Vardanjani — the judgment got here after the diplomat had fled to Iran.

Tehran additionally recruits enticing ladies to lure lonely, exiled males to the Turkish-Iran border, the place Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) can seize them. The ladies who function these honeytraps are often known as “regime swallows” — named for the sweet-voiced migratory chicken. In 2020, a girl working with the regime satisfied Habib Chaab, an Iranian dissident residing in Sweden, to fly to Istanbul. He went to satisfy her at a fuel station per her directions; there, males snatched him right into a white van and drove him throughout the border to Iran, the place Chaab was tried and convicted for his supposed involvement in a 2018 assault on a navy parade in southern Iran. Three years after being lured to Istanbul, Chaab was executed.

“Iran has been a persistent perpetrator of transnational repression for many years. It modifications relying on the political state of affairs,” says Marcus Michaelsen, an Iran professional on the Toronto-based Citizen Lab. “The size and scope has widened… so it has intensified.” Iran’s authorities has turn out to be extra hard-line and aggressive within the final decade. The violent therapy of the opposition in exile has escalated, as nicely. To seize dissidents overseas, the regime outsources espionage and hitmen to deprave native authorities and arranged crime.

“It’s simpler for them to disclaim the operation and produce other individuals doing the soiled work for them,” Michaelsen says.

Timur Soykan, a Turkish investigative journalist who authored a ebook a few drug lord conspiring with Iran to kidnap and kill targets on Turkish soil, says the Islamic Republic recruits native criminals with connections contained in the Turkish authorities. “In case you have a connection inside the authorities … you may get into the guarded safety programs. From there, yow will discover out the place the particular person’s cellphone sign is coming from and use the plate quantity recognition system — what [freeway] exits they used, the place they got here from, the place they’re going, in the event that they’ve left the nation.”

There’s additionally a facial recognition system that finds individuals, Soykan says. With a photograph of an escaped dissident, the regime’s employed assist can retrieve an handle and go on to the dissident’s residence. The Iranian regime can applicable all the Turkish police’s technological assets to seize its opponents.

The surveillance dragnet deployed by Iran and the viciousness of its ways are nicely documented via a protracted historical past of kidnappings, renditions, and assassinations. But there isn’t a precedent to elucidate how Katherine, a middle-aged American from Texas, acquired wrapped up in an operation hatched by one of many United States’ main adversaries.

Generally, it’s not clear who’s a sufferer or perpetrator

It took our group two years to unravel the mystifying plot. Sources proceed to achieve out, even from jail, to supply data as I write this. We reached out a number of occasions to Iranian officers in each Iran and Turkey, however they didn’t reply to our questions.

The enigma of Katherine, whose final identify The Verge is withholding as a result of she wasn’t indicted, unfolds inside a story of espionage and kidnapping that led to a trial in Turkey that I attended for greater than a yr. Lots of of courtroom paperwork unveiled a secret operation to kidnap two navy defectors and a businessman, and the way ladies like Katherine have been accomplices — willingly or unwillingly — to a world crime.

In Iran’s internet of searching down dissidents throughout borders, ladies are each culprits and victims in tales that play out like spy novels, full with illicit amorous affairs, betrayal, and treason. Generally, it’s not clear who’s a sufferer or perpetrator. Might Katherine have been each?

Contained in the BMW, surrounded by the three males claiming to be his involved mates, Rezaie contemplated his subsequent transfer. Angel took a gaggle selfie. Just a few faucets on his cellphone, and he appeared up once more. “Despatched,” he stated, confirming — or so it appeared — that he had messaged the photograph to Katherine.

Rezaie was feeling skittish. He had simply gotten into the automobile, however he was already looking for a technique to gracefully exit. He wanted to alter his garments, he stated. He wasn’t able to go. He wanted his paperwork. He wanted cash.

Angel opened his financial institution app on his cellphone and confirmed Rezaie his account, flush with greater than 120,000 of some forex — whether or not it was euros or US {dollars}, Rezaie couldn’t inform. “I can simply wire you the cash now,” Angel stated. “Ship me your account.”

“We may give $10,000 to somebody to throw you in a potato sack within the trunk.”

When Rezaie wavered, Angel switched ways, locking the doorways of the automobile. “Now that the door is closed, are you going to run?”

Rezaie threatened to bang on the home windows and make a scene; in response, Erdal pulled out a taser. He performed with the non-lethal weapon, letting it spark, its menacing cackle now pointed straight at Rezaie. “We don’t wish to power you.”

“That is Turkey,” Angel stated. “We may give $10,000 to somebody to throw you in a potato sack within the trunk. We may work with the mafia.” He flipped between menacing and conciliatory. “We don’t wish to kidnap you. In any other case, we might not have come ourselves. Apart from, Katherine’s on her technique to meet us. Let’s go.”

Then Erdal stunned Rezaie by shifting from Turkish to Farsi, Iran’s nationwide language. “Boro az Yalova,” he stated. Get out of Yalova. “Don’t keep right here. Whether or not you include us or not, you must flee Turkey.”

The language change stunned Rezaie. Was Erdal being pressured to work with Angel and Ismail? Earlier than Rezaie may ask Erdal, Angel demanded to know what Erdal was saying, clearly not fluent in Farsi.

This felt promising. Rezaie ignored Angel and raised his voice. “I’ll return tomorrow should you let me go now. When you’re going to return me to Iran, simply be sincere, so that you don’t should go to a lot bother.” Rezaie had already made plans to die by suicide quite than find yourself in an Iranian jail. At this level in his life, he had nothing to lose.

And similar to that, the boys let him get out of the automobile.

If Rezaie was confused by the boys’s intentions earlier, he was much more bewildered now. Why had they launched him?

The reason that eluded him then would turn out to be obvious years later, when the boys can be tried for espionage and kidnapping; the members of this crime ring merely weren’t all that good.

They might have simply given up as a result of they’d failed at persuading Rezaie to go together with them quietly — if Rezaie, larger and fitter than the opposite three males, had fought again and made a scene, it could have jeopardized their mission.

The lads weren’t good at planning or execution, however they’d advised Rezaie the reality in a single regard. There have been males in Yalova out to get him — a second, rival group of criminals that included a corrupt Turkish prosecutor named Davut Yilmaz and his crony law enforcement officials. This different ring was extra hardened and had higher assets; it’s doable that the boys within the BMW have been afraid to linger on the road lest it result in a conflict with their rivals.

Rezaie didn’t know any of this on the time, in fact. All he may do was decide up his bike and begin biking residence as quick as he may. The BMW adopted him for a bit, earlier than ultimately disappearing underneath the midnight moon. Rezaie by no means noticed the second group.

Round 1AM that very same morning, a pair hours after the would-be kidnappers let him out of the BMW, Rezaie went to the police with a pal who spoke fluent Turkish. The police took a routine assertion with out a lot curiosity till Rezaie talked about Katherine and the CIA. That pushed buttons for Turkish intelligence, which doesn’t need different NATO nations poking round in its yard. If there was even the slightest reality to Katherine being related to the CIA, Turkish intelligence was going to become involved.

Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MIT), the primary Turkish intelligence company, arrived with different branches of police. Rezaie was questioned till daybreak. He didn’t know the final names of the boys within the BMW, however the police did. They have been brothers and cousins, all from the identical household and sharing the identical final identify: Saglam. Angel’s actual identify was Ihsan, and he owned By Saglam, a protection contractor promoting weapons to purchasers from Europe to Africa.

“These guys appear to have a historical past of crime,” one of many native law enforcement officials stated. He urged Rezaie to not press prices and easily let issues go. The intelligence officers had their very own concepts of what Rezaie ought to or shouldn’t do — they needed Rezaie to satisfy the Saglams as deliberate later that day. Turkish intelligence would monitor the assembly and catch the abductors: it was a sting operation.

The next night, Rezaie walked to the rendezvous level, a close-by shopping center overlooking a freeway overpass. Two undercover cops shadowed him from a couple of ft behind. Rezaie acquired a textual content from Ismail: “The place’s your suitcase? Come to the bridge. We’ll decide you up there.”

Rezaie couldn’t see Ismail, however Ismail may see him.

“Who’re the 2 males following you?” Ismail texted, instantly suspicious of the cops tailing him. “Why did you name the police?”

Rezaie modified instructions and misplaced the cops, however Ismail wasn’t satisfied.

“When you assume I went to the police, why are you even right here?” Rezaie texted again.

“Katherine may be very upset that you simply advised the police,” Ismail wrote. “The US Embassy doesn’t wish to become involved with the Turkish police, nor does the CIA.”

Rezaie didn’t go to the bridge, and Ismail didn’t textual content again. The sting appeared to have failed.

When Rezaie met with the Saglams once more, it might be in courtroom. He would uncover then that the plot towards him was a part of a a lot larger operation with unseen co-conspirators. However that night time, he had little notion of the complexity of the forces arrayed towards him and even much less of how he had, by reporting the Saglams to the police, already set in movement the eventual seize of his would-be kidnappers.

Turkish authorities arrested 16 individuals — 14 Turks and two Iranians — in February 2022, practically 2.5 years after they dedicated their alleged crimes. Throughout their investigation, MIT and police detectives gathered CCTV footage, images, cellphone data, WhatsApp messages, site visitors data, and witness statements to show their case. Based on the indictment, the obvious masterminds of the operation — three Iranians working immediately with IRGC intelligence — had escaped. Rezaie discovered in regards to the arrests when he noticed photos of the Saglams revealed within the Turkish press.

Because the trial commenced in July 2022, the nation was fixated on the sensational particulars written within the Turkish media. Even in a rustic inured to tales of deep-state ways, the story was lurid and alarming. Yilmaz, the corrupt Turkish prosecutor in command of the fear division, and the Saglams, a household of retired navy officers, have been amongst these charged with spying for Iran. It was clear that the Islamic Republic had infiltrated Turkey’s police and judiciary. Past that, these extremely publicized arrests and prosecutions represented an unprecedented flip in Turkish-Iranian relations — Iran had lastly crossed the road, and Turkey wouldn’t tolerate unabated assaults on its residence soil.

The connection between the 2 nations has lengthy been fraught. As a NATO member, Turkey has to abide by Western sanctions towards Iran. As its neighbor, Turkey buys vitality from Iran; the 2 have commerce agreements and cooperate on cross-border crime preventing. However Iran was overstepping its boundaries, Soykan says, and there have been extra Turkish intelligence operations to cease Iranian plots within the final a number of years.

Turkey and Iran even have an extradition settlement for these thought of criminals by each nations, like drug sellers. However overseas navy personnel with official asylum claims are protected by Turkish legislation — Iran can’t merely ask Turkey handy over defectors like Rezaie. The Iranian regime selected, as an alternative, a weird plan for rendition with a confidence sport.

In October 2022, a couple of periods into the trial, I squeezed into the again of the stuffy, crowded courtroom as police walked in with wrists cuffed to the defendants. The gendarmerie uncuffed the accused and sat them in entrance of three black-robed judges.

Murtaza Sultan Sanjari, the one Iranian defendant nonetheless in custody, joined from jail through video convention. Different defendants, together with two ladies who had already served 18 months in jail, sat with the general public within the again. The accused and their legal professionals gave hourlong emotional speeches because the judges listened patiently. Each single particular person pleaded harmless.

“Throw sufficient mud so some will stick,” stated Yilmaz, the accused prosecutor, when he took the stand. The 46-year-old man angrily referred to as the media protection pretend information and claimed he was being framed. One of many Saglam males denounced the others and stated he didn’t contemplate them his household anymore. One of many legal professionals cried whereas speaking about how jail had made his shopper depressed and sick.

“It’s such as you fall right into a deep gap, and you can not get out.”

There have been moments of levity, as nicely. Erdal Saglam — the person who had spoken Farsi with Rezaie within the BMW — claimed he went to Yalova to not kidnap anybody however for the recent springs, an area attraction for vacationers.

Amongst these talked about within the indictment however lacking within the courtroom was Katherine. Little of what was stated in courtroom make clear what the boys actually needed from Rezaie or who Katherine actually was. Within the indictment and the attraction, a coherent story started to type. Based on a police confession by one of many defendants, the kidnapping ring had already efficiently kidnapped one Iranian military pilot and returned him to Iran. Rezaie was one in every of their subsequent targets.

At 46, Sanjari is bookish with glasses and chubby cheeks. He has turn out to be each the canary and scapegoat on this case. “It’s such as you fall right into a deep gap, and you can not get out,” he stated.

Sanjari’s confession established most of the operation’s key particulars to the police. We despatched a lawyer to talk with him face-to-face within the Turkish jail by which he’s incarcerated. Over a two-hour interview, he reiterated and fleshed out the testimony he gave within the case however maintained that he was harmless.

A self-proclaimed businessman and translator, Sanjari had dabbled in many alternative sectors. He used to fabricate bathe valves in each Tehran and Istanbul. Through the years, he usually labored with Ihsan Saglam; Sanjari’s LinkedIn profile lists him as a enterprise specialist for By Saglam. Based on Sanjari, they traded overseas in US {dollars}, gold, and weapons, making journeys to sub-Saharan African nations just like the Ivory Coast and Gambia.

Ihsan Saglam, who Rezaie had often called Angel, was revered in Istanbul’s enterprise group, an older man with a household that included a number of grown kids. However there was one other aspect to him — he had a penchant for black fits and blonde girlfriends, and Katherine was simply one in every of his lovers.

Ihsan was eager to do enterprise in Iran. Sanjari, who had an Iranian girlfriend and was fluent in each Turkish and Farsi, had high-profile connections in Iran, together with an agent of the regime, Seyed Mehdi Hossaini. Hossaini was in search of a group in Turkey to hold out renditions of Iranian dissidents. Sanjari noticed a possibility and launched the 2 to one another.

Ihsan had the opposite Saglams; he additionally introduced the prosecutor, Yilmaz, who had his personal connections, into the ring.

The primary kidnapping was haphazard however successful. The ring kidnapped Mashali Firouze, a defected Iranian military pilot, alongside together with his spouse and son, in southwest Turkey in February 2019. Based on Sanjari, the abductors have been paid $28,000 for the operation.

Rezaie would have acknowledged their MO. The Saglams, together with Yilmaz and his group, promised Firouze they’d rescue him from the regime that was after him, arranging to take him to Israel via Iraq. As an alternative, Firouze and his household have been flown to the town of Van on the Iranian border.

It’s not clear why Firouze so simply agreed to get on the aircraft. Primarily based on Rezaie’s personal recounting, the Saglams weren’t precisely probably the most convincing actors. Firouze needed to be keenly conscious that he was nonetheless nicely inside the regime’s attain — Tehran was close to, and Israel was far. After we pressed Sanjari in jail, he stated Firouze had realized he was being handed to the regime and had accepted his destiny. Sources in Iran say that Firouze is at the moment languishing in a secret navy jail in Tehran, the place the regime holds these accused of spying for adversary nations, like Israel.

Israel has a historical past of recruiting Iranian navy defectors in Turkey as spies. In 2019, Turkey deported one such defector; he was later executed in Iran. Firouze’s willingness to flee to Israel could have been seen as satisfactory proof of treason by itself.

After their profitable operation, Sanjari took Ihsan Saglam to Iran on an invite from Hossaini. Sanjari says that extremely ranked Iranian intelligence officers met them at an airport entrance reserved for VIP company. The welcome didn’t final lengthy; they have been then hauled off to a Tehran suburb, the place Ihsan was questioned by numerous intelligence brokers on how Firouze’s kidnapping had gone. Sanjari served as interpreter throughout the interrogation. He says that Hossaini and others have been annoyed and dissatisfied with how Ihsan had carried out throughout the operation.

Iranian intelligence was displeased and suspicious

All through the kidnapping, mistrust and battle had brewed between Ihsan and Yilmaz, who, regardless of working collectively on the kidnapping, noticed one another as opponents for future jobs and probably profitable payouts from Iran. In the meantime, Ihsan had been shifty and troublesome to achieve throughout Firouze’s kidnapping, avoiding Hossaini’s texts and cellphone calls when the Iranian agent needed proof of Firouze’s seize. Iranian intelligence was displeased and suspicious.

Ihsan was receptive, even placating. He reminded the brokers that he had, in spite of everything, efficiently delivered Firouze. He would carry on delivering, he stated. He would abduct extra dissidents for them; he may even launder regime cash to Africa, evading Western sanctions, and he may assist establish Israeli cells in Iran. He may turn out to be a vital asset for Tehran.

Regardless of their suspicions, the intelligence officers relented and gave him the second job: kidnapping Rezaie.

Seven months later, Ihsan acquired Rezaie’s handle via Yilmaz, who had entry to authorities databases of refugees.

Ihsan despatched his cousins and brothers to do reconnaissance within the coastal city. Whereas the Saglams groomed Rezaie, Hossaini met with Yilmaz. Sanjari, in his function as interpreter for the regime, was now aware of all sides of what was turning into a tangled, multi-actor operation. Yilmaz and Ihsan had believed that they have been competing for Iran’s cash; they have been, actually, right. Hossaini had doubts about whether or not the Saglams may do the job, and consequently, went behind Ihsan’s again to supply Yilmaz and his police underlings $50,000 to function as a fallback kidnapping group.

However when Yilmaz’s cronies bumped into the Saglams in Yalova, Ihsan put two and two collectively. Livid, Ihsan took Sanjari into the woods and threatened to torture him. “How many individuals are you giving the job to?” he demanded to know.

Surprisingly, the Saglams didn’t name off the job, and neither did Yilmaz. That night time in October 2019, the 2 competing abduction groups, every in their very own car, have been concurrently dispatched by Hossaini to nab Rezaie. As luck would have it, they ended up at the very same fuel station. A minor public meltdown ensued, with the boys screaming threats at one another over the fuel pumps. After the shouting match, the automobile with the Saglams, the BMW, headed towards Rezaie. After they caught up with him, issues performed out roughly as Hossaini had predicted. Ihsan had gotten fortunate with the primary kidnapping; confronted with the slightest little bit of recalcitrance from Rezaie, he instantly crashed out.

However what in regards to the blonde American, who the Saglams had claimed was a CIA agent? What was her function in all this?

Hossaini’s doubts in regards to the Saglams had borne out, however his backup plan didn’t pan out both. Neither group, it turned out, had what it took. (It wasn’t the primary time that Iran’s dependence on native beginner crooks and mafia connections had doomed its transnational plots. In a single case, Iran employed a heroin addict to kill an Israeli vacationer in Turkey, solely to have the addict flip himself in to Turkish authorities.)

Regardless of the fiasco, the regime employed the Saglams for a 3rd time, ordering them to abduct Iranian businessman Shahnam Golshani, one other asylum-seeker residing in a Turkish city on the shores of the Black Sea.

That plan failed, as nicely, and Golshani ultimately acquired asylum in Australia, shifting hundreds of miles out of Tehran’s attain.

Together with his would-be kidnappers in custody, there was nonetheless one unfastened finish that Rezaie couldn’t cease interested by: Katherine. He may wrap his head across the story of the incompetent Turkish cousins getting blended up with the Iranian regime. However what in regards to the blonde American, who the Saglams had claimed was a CIA agent? What was her function in all this?

On July 19, 2021, Rezaie wrote to the US Embassy’s basic e mail in Ankara about Katherine, hoping somebody would observe up. “Nearly two years in the past, there was a conspiracy to kidnap me and convey me again to Iran, by which an American citizen was additionally concerned … I thought of it my obligation to tell you of this. I’ll ship you some case paperwork that present the function of this woman on this operation,” the e-mail learn.

After no response, Rezaie reported Katherine to an FBI agent by calling their hotline within the US. Nobody referred to as again.

Then he selected a extra direct route. In Could 2022, Rezaie wrote to Katherine on Fb Messenger. “I’m positive you bear in mind me,” he stated. “Do you know that if your folks may kidnap me and extradite me to Iran, I’d ultimately be executed three months later? How did you persuade your self to work with the abductors?”

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get a response.

Katherine’s public Fb options glad, smiling photographs with household and mates on outings and charity occasions. One Fb submit reads: “All too usually.. we ladies, discover it simpler to criticize one another as an alternative of constructing one another up.” Connected to the submit are a number of photographs of herself.

The small print of her life as sketched out via her social media accounts are removed from sparse. She’s married to a plastic surgeon and seems to work at his workplace. She’s pro-Trump and anti-immigration. She has no arrests; a background test got here up clear apart from a dashing ticket in 2011. She is, in different phrases, shockingly common.

Just a few months after Rezaie’s abortive kidnapping, Katherine gave a press release to the police — just one web page lengthy — that ended up in courtroom data. She was in Turkey for enterprise, she stated, and since Ihsan had enterprise in Yalova, she went with him for sightseeing. She referred to Rezaie as “this particular person named Mohammad” and described their assembly as coincidental.

“I completely don’t settle for the allegations of the particular person named Mohammad. I didn’t have any dialog with him about giving him a job, I didn’t threaten him, I didn’t detain or kidnap him. Once I discovered that there have been such allegations towards me, I needed to return and provides my assertion myself.”

Turkish authorities initially banned Katherine from journey, however after her assertion, they let her go away the nation.

Sooner or later, I referred to as Katherine’s Texas quantity from Turkey. She answered.

She was nervous, obscure, and reluctant to open up. She was confused, she advised me a number of occasions. However she stayed on the cellphone for an hour whereas she ready her lunch.

“I didn’t actually attempt to get extra data as a result of I actually didn’t care … It’s none of my enterprise. Ever. I don’t get into individuals’s enterprise.”

She usually visits Turkey simply to buy groceries, Katherine stated. For that objective, she saved an condominium in Bebek, a ritzy neighborhood in Istanbul. She had beforehand met the Saglams in Africa, however she’s unclear about the place in Africa — she rattled off nations like Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Congo. Katherine noticed Ihsan and his cousin Ismail at a United Nations workplace the place she labored. Which department of the UN did she work for? She didn’t bear in mind. She stated the Saglams have been buying one thing from a authorities in one of many African nations however had no concept what they have been shopping for.

Your entire dialog was like this: incoherent and inconsistent.

“I didn’t actually attempt to get extra data as a result of I actually didn’t care … It’s none of my enterprise. Ever. I don’t get into individuals’s enterprise,” she stated.

However she was actually in individuals’s enterprise. Based on Katherine herself, she was going to work with Ihsan, however their enterprise fell via as a result of he didn’t come up with the money for to speculate. What sort of work? What sort of enterprise? She didn’t specify. She wouldn’t make clear their private relationship both — have been they mates? Mere acquaintances? Romantic companions?

Katherine’s recounting on the cellphone didn’t match up with Rezaie’s story or together with her personal assertion to Turkish authorities in 2019. Within the assertion, she stated that her assembly with Rezaie was coincidental; she additionally stated that at no level had they mentioned “taking him to America or some other nation.”

However on the cellphone, she advised me that the assembly had been deliberate and that Ihsan had requested her to speak to Rezaie on the restaurant to persuade him to return to Iran.

“They advised me the Turkish authorities needed him to return. As a result of he was there illegally,” Katherine stated, the tempo of her Southern accent accelerating. “Might I discuss to the man and simply get him to speak to me, and they might get him to return?”

She spoke to Rezaie in English, since she doesn’t know Turkish or Farsi. She was on her cellphone more often than not whereas within the restaurant, she stated, tuning out the conversations taking place elsewhere.

“I solely spoke to the man, actually, [for] like two minutes. However I solely know what I used to be advised … So I used to be advised that the man was within the navy, and he ran away from the navy and left his household and kids in Iran. And the federal government was wanting him so they may deport him again,” she stated.

Katherine stated she thought the Turkish authorities had employed the Saglams like bounty hunters to influence Rezaie to return to his navy service in Iran and again to his spouse and youngsters. I defined the Turkish authorities doesn’t persuade migrants to go away. Native police scour retailers, streets, and houses in quest of undocumented immigrants to throw them in elimination facilities after which deport them. However Rezaie was in Turkey legally with UN safety.

Katherine grew to become so anxious whereas speaking to me that she burned the lunch she’d been making.

“I’m freaked out a bit … Even after I was speaking to the man, the man didn’t appear remorseful about his household or unhappy. It appeared just like the couple of minutes I spoke to him, like he was mendacity about one thing … I don’t know his story. All I do know is that, you recognize, I simply felt unhappy for his spouse and kids, not for him, as a result of he abandoned them.”

Rezaie’s first spouse divorced him, and he remarried one other Iranian lady in Yalova; he hasn’t seen his son since he left Iran. In the course of the name, Katherine repeated 17 occasions that she advised Rezaie he ought to return to Iran as a result of he has children.

Katherine painted herself as a caring particular person with household values who had suffered deeply and wouldn’t hurt anybody. She stated that she misplaced her 25-year-old son when he was hit by a drunk driver; then she’d had a stroke and a number of other coronary heart assaults. (Public data present a 25-year-old relative of Katherine’s with the identical final identify died in 2016.)

She stated that she was additionally working with Saving Jane, a nonprofit, to cease human trafficking in Africa. (Saving Jane advised us Katherine approached the group with a challenge in 2018, however they didn’t approve it.)

Furthermore, Katherine denied having ever tried to rent Rezaie as a captain for her ship. She did have a ship at one level, she stated, however it had by no means been in Turkey.

All through the interview, Katherine gave the impression to be in disbelief that the Saglams would kidnap anybody, apparently unaware that they’d been convicted in a infamous trial.

“You realize, that sounds prefer it’s not the reality, what you’re saying … And in the event that they did, it was in Turkish,” she stated. “Like I stated, I didn’t perceive them.”

The trial resulted in 2023, practically three years after Rezaie’s tried abduction. The courtroom returned responsible verdicts for a lot of the Saglams — for espionage, the kidnapping of Firouze, and the tried kidnapping of Rezaie. Sanjari was additionally convicted and sentenced to 16 years and eight months in jail; he stays in jail. Ihsan was sentenced to fifteen years and 10 months in jail. Yilmaz acquired 11 years and eight months, and he was disbarred. The opposite defendants — together with Erdal, Ihsan’s Turkish girlfriend, and Sanjari’s Iranian girlfriend — have been acquitted.

“Iran acquired away with it once more and can proceed to do the identical with different dissidents.”

Yilmaz and the Saglams discovered responsible have been launched on probation. They should check in each two weeks with the police and can’t go away the nation till their conviction is finalized. In Turkey’s authorized system, it usually takes years to exhaust all appeals, a plan of action that defendants do usually pursue. It’s probably they may stay free.

Rezaie, now within the US, fears for different Iranians within the opposition. “Iran acquired away with it once more and can proceed to do the identical with different dissidents,” he stated.

Iran’s fall man, Sanjari, stated he desires to turn out to be an informant for the US in the event that they get him out of jail, and his largest concern is being returned to Iran.

Once I defined the trial and the decision to Katherine, she advised me that the Saglams have been her mates and would proceed to be so.

“They’re actually — I assumed — genuinely variety and good. I by no means felt unsafe and by no means felt at risk,” she stated. “I really feel unhealthy that they acquired wrapped up and sucked into unhealthy issues for cash.”

When my producer reached out to Katherine once more, she forwarded our messages to Ihsan, who threatened to take us to the Turkish prosecutor and demanded to know why we have been attempting to smash his status. (Turkey is ranked 159th out of 180 within the Reporters With out Borders press freedom index; easy accusations of libels can result in home arrest or different restrictions). We requested Ihsan for an interview a number of occasions.

“I’m significantly warning you,” Ihsan texted when he was reached for remark.

After repeated reach-outs, Katherine started texting us again, after we requested if she needed to reply to particular claims made by Rezaie and the Saglams. “He stated, she stated lies,” Katherine texted.

It was a complicated message. However then once more, Katherine had all the time been complicated.

Further reporting by Chris Harland-Dunaway