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U.S. sanctions five men linked to plot on Saudi ambassador

12 October 2011 03:20 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that it has slapped sanctions on five individuals linked to the assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador to Washington, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Among them, Qasem Soleimani, Hamed Abdollahi, Abdul Reza Shahlai and Ali Gholam Shakuri are senior officers from the Quds Force, an elite division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for foreign operations, said the Treasury.

The fifth person, Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen holding both Iranian and U.S. passports, was listed for sanctions for arranging the assassination plot on behalf of the Quds Force. He was arrested on Sept. 29 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Arbabsiar and Shakuri, who remains at large, were named on Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in a criminal complaint in connection with the murder plot. Among the charges brought against the pair was conspiracy to engage in foreign travel and use interstate and foreign commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.

According to the criminal complaint, Arbabsiar arranged for 100, 000 dollars to be sent from Tehran to the U.S. as a down payment for the assassination plot. Two wire transfers totaling approximately 100,000 dollars were sent from a non-Iranian foreign bank to a bank in the United States, to the account of the person recruited by Arbabsiar to carry out the assassination.

The five men were "connected to a plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States Adel Al-Jubeir, while he was in the United States and to carry out follow-on attacks against other countries’ interests inside the United States and in another country," the Treasury said in a statement.

"Iran once again has used the Quds Force and the international financial system to pursue an act of international terrorism, this time aimed against a Saudi diplomat," accused David Cohen, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

"The financial transactions at the heart of this plot lay bare the risk that banks and other institutions face in doing business with Iran," he added.

U.S. persons are banned from doing business with the blacklisted men, and their assets in the U.S. are frozen.