Italy released Mohammad Abedini, 38, an Iranian wanted by the U.S. government, and returned him to Tehran amid allegations that he was involved in a drone attack that killed three U.S. service members early last year.
Abedini was arrested in Milan at Washington’s behest, and the United States sought extradition. The Italian Justice Ministry concluded that it lacked justification to comply with the U.S. request, Reuters reported.
Iranian state media reported that Abedini touched down in Tehran on the evening of Jan. 12. That timing has led Italian commentators to speculate that the Islamic Republic freed Italian journalist Cecilia Sala days prior as part of a prisoner swap, per the Associated Press.
“Understand what’s going on here. American diplomats say to the Italians: ‘Please arrest an operative of the Tehran regime who helped kill three American service members,’” wrote Clifford May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“The Tehran regime tells the Italians: ‘Keep our guy locked up and one of your citizens, a young woman journalist, will be locked up. Maybe we’ll do worse to her,’” May wrote. “The Italians bow to the pressure from Tehran.” The moral, he added, is that “ diplomacy is no substitute for muscle.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni claimed that Sala was released due to a “diplomatic triangulation” between Italy, Iran and the United States.
Iran also released German-Iranian human rights activist Nahid Taghavi—who was arrested in October 2020 and received a sentence of almost 11 years for purported links to an “illegal group” and “propaganda against the state”—on Jan. 13. (Amnesty International said that Taghavi was tortured.)
Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, wrote in German that it is “a great moment of joy” that Taghavi “can finally embrace her family again.”
Jason Brodsky, the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, wrote on Jan. 8 that Italy shouldn’t release Abedini after Sala was freed. “There is zero equivalence between these two cases,” he wrote, adding that Italy shouldn’t “undermine the integrity” of the U.S. and Italian legal systems to “fall for” the Iranian regime’s “extortion racket.”
Brodsky wrote on Jan. 12, about Abedini’s release, that Washington “and its allies should be building an architecture internationally to increase the costs for Iran’s regime for hostage-taking and reduce the supply of Western nationals traveling there.”
“We go through this over and over again, yet nothing changes,” he wrote.
The U.S. Justice Department charged Abedini with conspiracy counts of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and supporting a foreign terrorist organization tied to the fatal attack on Tower 22, a U.S. military installation in Jordan. The charges would amount to a potential life sentence in prison.
“These perpetrators allegedly facilitated the transfer of electronic components to an Iranian company which one of them owned,” Paul Abbate, deputy director of the FBI, stated last month.
“According to the charges, the company owner then supplied the IRGC with drone technology that was used in various terrorist acts, including an attack on a U.S. military base in Jordan, which killed three service members and injured dozens more,” he added.