According to Khabar Online correspondent, at a ceremony held on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Asgari's abduction, Shamkhani, former Defense Minister of President Khatami's cabinet said: "The truth is that General Asgari is so committed not the one who could request for political asylum from a foreign country."
“Anyone in the country who doubts about the issue, is a Mossad spy and follows the propaganda politics of the Israeli intelligence institute which is based on causing fear and horror," the advisor to Iran's head of the Center for Strategic Research added.
Brigadier General Asgari was the deputy defense minister and cabinet member of President Mohammad Khatami who became involved in the olive business after retirement. Arriving in Turkey on a private visit from Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 7, 2006, he disappeared a few days later.
In the 1980s, Asgari was the commander of IRGC in Lebanon and during the 1990s he was the top Iranian intelligence official in Lebanon, where he worked with the Shiite militant resistance group Hezbollah.
Iranian sources and Associated Press reports say that Asgari was kidnapped by the Mossad with the help of other western intelligence agencies. An Israeli source has indicated that he is Prisoner X held incommunicado in Israel's Ayalon Prison.
Some Western sources have claimed that he defected and willingly cooperated with their intelligence officials. Iran sent several defense officials to Turkey to discuss the matter during the last week of February and also asked Interpol to investigate the case.
Admiral Shamkhani suggested: "By their abduction act, the intelligence services affiliated to global hegemony want to claim that one who is involved in Iranian Islamic Revolution, jihad and strives for martyrdom has severed his ties with the Islamic Revolution. This way, they want to pin a crocodile medal to their breasts."
"The intelligence agencies of the Zionist regime try to take advantage of the issue and prove that they are crocodiles while they are nothing other than lizards," former Iranian defense minister said.
Shamkhani went on to say that he was associated with General Asgari and stressed again that he was definitely kidnapped by the intelligence organizations and has survived Mossad prisons by now.
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