Mystery Surrounds Death Of Iranian Aerospace Scientist
Conflicting reports circulate about the death of Iranian aerospace scientist Ayoob Entezari with some calling it an assassination and government saying he was ill.
Conflicting reports circulate about the death of Iranian aerospace scientist Ayoob Entezari with some calling it an assassination and government saying he was ill.
The governor-general's office in the central province of Yazd handed a certificate to Entezari's family confirming his "martyrdom", a label the Islamic Republic uses for people who died in the line of duty for the country.
Yazd’s provincial judicial authorities, however, announced on Sunday that the news published in some media about the important work the aerospace scientist was doing is not true, insisting that he was an ordinary employee of an industrial company and died in hospital due to illness.
The judiciary claimed that one of Entezari's relatives had posted “these rumors” on his social media page to attract attention and was widely republished on other platforms.
The rumors and claims about Entezari’s death attracted unusual public interest because of a series of accidents and deaths related to researchers and protected nuclear and military installations in Iran in the past two years. It has been widely reported that Israel has been behind most of these incidents.
Enetzari by most accounts wroked for the government in developing drones, a field in which Iran has made significant progress in recent years and raised alarm with Israel.
Entezari, who held a PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Tehran’s Sharif University, died last week with some reports mentioning food poisoning as the cause of his death. He reportedly took part in several projects at the Yazd Institute of Technology.
According to reports, Entezari returned home after a dinner meeting with symptoms of food poisoning and died in a hospital in Yazd as his condition worsened. Some sources also reported the disappearance of the person who had invited him, with some saying that he left the country immediately after the meeting.
The circumstances surrounding his death are shady as some people on social media say the Iranian scientist was killed and the Israeli Mossad is also mentioned in some reports as being responsible.
His death was covered widely across Israeli media as the case bears the hallmark of an assassination by poisoning, reminiscent of attempts portrayed in the TV series Tehran in which Israelis tried to kill the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard by a toxic agent.
Reports about Entezari’s fate came a day after Iran confirmed the death of a colonel from the Quds Force, Ali Esmailzadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the second in two weeks from the unit which allegedly oversees terror operations abroad.
Iranian government and IRGC media said that Col. Esmailzadeh died “in an incident in recent days” at his home without mentioning any details after Iran International quoted sources in Iran as saying that the IRGC killed him over suspicions of espionage. Officials of the Revolutionary Guard told Esmailzadeh’s family that the reason for his death was suicide.
He was a close colleague of Colonel Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei, the acting commander of the elite Qods Unit 840, who was earlier shot dead behind the wheel of his car outside his home in Tehran on May 22 by two gunmen who fled the scene on a motorbike. The sources said that the IRGC became suspicious that Esmailzadeh divulged information about his colleague and decided to eliminate him.
The government’s official IRNA news website broke the news of Gholamreza Shariati’s move to leave the country, while several other current and former officials have been detained. He is said to have been one of the officials backing the owner of the building in his project that eventually violated many regulations.
The Metropol twin towers collapsed on May 23 burying more than 80 people under the rubble, with 42 bodies recovered so far, although the current governor insists that the number is 38. It is not clear what happened to the other 40 people who went missing, as most of the debris has been removed.
A report in local media said that 108 construction workers were on duty in each shift, in addition to businesses that had already opened their doors and visitors to the building. These numbers indicate that casualties could have been many more in the tragic event.
Immediately after the disaster it became apparent that the owner, Hossein Abdolbaghi, a well-connected businessman, had broken multiple regulations when constructing the building, having enjoyed the backing of officials.
One prominent individual who appears to have been one of his protectors is the son of Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the supreme national security council. Documents obtained by Iran International last week showed Mo’ud Shamkhani recommended Abdolbaghi to city authorities as a reliable businessman.
Shamkhani later denied any connections with the owner of Metropol.
But what the building owner did, was securing illegal permissions to build additional 5 floors, above the city’s building code allowing only 8-story-high structures. Metropol, which was almost completed when it collapsed had 13 floors.
The incident instantly became an example of government corruption and insider dealings by Islamic Republic officials and led to days of large anti-government protests in Khuzestan and elsewhere. The government deployed thousands of “anti-riot” special troops to Abadan and other cities in the province and arrested an unknown number of people, stopping the protests.
Abdolbaghi’s fate also remains uncertain. On the day of the incident, local law enforcement announced that the owner was arrested, but the following day, higher level officials claimed he had died in the incident and produced an unrecognizable body, which they claimed was Abdolbaghi and confirmed with DNA testing. Experts, on the other hand, insist that it would not be possible to complete a DNA identity authentication in a few days.
Rumors on social media said Abdolbaghi had left the country with the help of officials who were partners in crime, and he was possibly in Turkey. No one has been able to verify if he is dead or went abroad.
The controversy surrounding the Metropol towers is not the only scandal in which former governor Shariati has been implicated. In 2020, court proceedings in the case of an illegal privatization deal revealed that his wife tokk $200,000 in bribes from the owner of Haft-Tappeh sugar mill company to provide him cover when he failed to pay his workers for months.