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Spiegel Online: Mossad Behind Killing of Iranian Scientist

The Israeli secret service Mossad was responsible for the assassination last month of an Iranian scientist in Tehran, Germany's Spiegel Online news website reported.

The killing of Dariush Rezaei-Nejad was "the first serious action taken by the new Mossad chief Tamir Pardo," according to an unidentified Israeli intelligence source quoted by Spiegel Online.

Iranian press reports said Rezaei-Nejad was shot five times by unknown assailants as he and his wife were waiting for their child in front of a kindergarten in Tehran on July 23. His wife was wounded in the attack.

The Iranian government blamed the United States and Israel for the attack, the latest in a series targeting Iranian nuclear scientists who are suspected by the West to be working on a nuclear weapon program.

Tehran denies it has such a program and insists that its atomic activities are entirely peaceful.

Rezaei-Nejad is believed to have worked on the trigger mechanism for nuclear weapons, Spiegel Online said in its report first published on Monday.

Source: Agence France Presse


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