The Iranian judiciary’s official news agency Mizan Online has said earlier that Abedini would return to Tehran “in the coming hours” [Getty/archive]
Iran announced on Sunday that a national held in Italy had return home, shortly after Rome said it was seeking to revoke his arrest and extradition warrant.
Mohammad Abedini, 38, was arrested in Italy last month at the behest of the United States, which accused him of supplying sophisticated drone navigation technology to Iran’s military, in violation of US sanctions.
“Esmaeil Baqaei, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced the release of Mr. Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, an Iranian citizen detained in Italy, and his return to his homeland,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Iranian judiciary’s official news agency Mizan Online has said earlier that Abedini would return to Tehran “in the coming hours”.
The website said that following consultations between Iran’s foreign and intelligence ministries and Italy’s intelligence service, “the problem was resolved and led to his release and return”.
US justice authorities alleged that the components supplied by Abedini were later used in a drone strike last January at a Jordanian military base near the Syrian border that killed three American service members.
Abedini has been held in a Milan jail since his arrest, with Iran denying the accusations and calling his detention an “illegal act” that risked damaging Rome-Tehran relations.
Accusations
The statement from Iran comes shortly after Italy’s justice minister Carlo Nordio said that Rome is seeking to revoke Abedini’s arrest and extradition to the US, according to his office.
His release comes just days after Iranian authorities released Italian journalist Cecilia Sala from a Tehran jail, following intense diplomatic efforts by Rome.
Nordio’s request came four days after Sala’s release, but Tehran has denied any links between her case and Abedini’s.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called her release the result of “intense work through diplomatic and intelligence channels”.
Italy’s justice ministry said on Sunday that under Italy’s extradition treaty with the United States, extradition can only take place if the alleged crimes are punishable under both country’s laws.
“The first conduct attributed to the Iranian citizen of ‘criminal association to violate the IEEPA'” is not “punished by the Italian criminal system”, the statement said, referring to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a US federal law which gives the US president emergency sanction powers.
Abedini was also accused of “criminal association to provide material support to a terrorist organisation resulting in death” and of providing “material support to a foreign terrorist organisation resulting in death”.
But the justice ministry said that no evidence was provided as “a basis for the accusations made”.
It added that the only certainty was that Abedini had carried out “production and trade activities of technological instruments with his own country” that had “potential, but not exclusive, military applications”.
In its charging documents, the US government called Abedini the founder and managing director of an Iranian company “that manufactures navigation modules used in the” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s “military drone program”.
At the same time as Abedini’s arrest in Italy, US authorities arrested another man, Iranian-American Mahdi Sadeghi, whom it said colluded with Abedini to ship sanctioned items to Iran.
He remains in a US jail.
