Italian police have arrested five Italians and two suspected Iranian secret agents on suspicion of illegally trafficking arms and explosives to Iran through Eastern Europe in breach of an international embargo. Reports said two further alleged Iranian agents were on the run and were being sought by police.
Police in Milan said the operation had been conducted with the help of British, Swiss and Romanian authorities. They said in a statement that they had intercepted optical-precision equipment, scuba-diving jackets and oxygen tanks bound for Iran as well as tracer bullets, incendiary bombs and other "explosive materials".
The investigation , dubbed Operation Sniper, was led Armando Spataro, the Milan prosecutor who also investigated the 2003 kidnapping and "extraordinary rendition " of Abu Omar, a Muslim cleric suspected of abetting terrorism, by CIA agents in Milan. Last November an Italian judge convicted 22 CIA agents and an American military official in absentia of the kidnapping. They are appealing.
Police said Operation Sniper had begun in June 2009. One of the Italians arrested was a lawyer from Turin who also ran an "import export business", Mr Spataro told a news conference. He said the other arrested Italians were from Monza, Brescia and Cadeo in the province of Piacenza, and Switzerland.
The arrests come as the Western powers push for tougher United Nations sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme following a report by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last month that Iran had enriched uranium to 19.8 percent, 0.2 percentage points below the threshold needed to start the chain reaction seen in a nuclear bomb.
Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, incurred the warth of Tehran last month by comparing President Ahmadinejad to Hitler during a visis to Israel and calling for tougher trade sanctions. State-controlled Iranian radio and television accused Mr Berlusconi of being "a servant of Israel".
Mr Spataro said that the tapping of phones had played a "crucial role" in the Iranian arms smuggling investigation. Mr Berlusconi, who currently faces two trials for alleged bribery and tax fraud and has been repeatedly investigated for alleged corruption, is pushing through Parliament a bill which would restrict the use of phone tapping in criminal investigations.
Police said some of the equipment seized in the operation was military and some was "dual use". The Italian news agency ANSA said the "optical equipment" had been seized at Heathrow airport. The two Iranians arrested were named as Nejad Hamid Masoumi, 51, accredited as a journalist in Italy, who was arrested at the Foreign Press Club in Rome, and Ali Damirchiloo, 55, who was arrested in Turin.
Mr Masoumi is accredited for Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (RTV), member of the Foreign Press Association in Rome since 1993.
Source:The Times
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