Iran announces "confessions" of assassinations of nuclear scientists

The Iranian state television broadcast what it described as confessions of those accused of assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, who worked as telling Israeli agents to sabotage the country's nuclear program. Five Iranian scientists and academics have been killed or attacked since 2010 in incidents believed to have targeted the nuclear program of Iran, which the West says is aimed at producing a bomb. Iran denies this, arguing that its nuclear program is peaceful, and denounced the killings of its scientists as acts of terrorism committed by Western intelligence agencies and the Mossad, Israeli intelligence agency. In a documentary aired on Sunday night called "Club of Terror" and a dramatic score, a group of men and women seated against a black background confessed to having undergone weeks of training in Israel and then have returned to Iran to commit the murders of nuclear scientists. One man interviewed, Behzad Abdoli, said he was taken to a training camp, whose location in the film was censored. "I have received military training there, training for motorcycle riding, shooting, self defense," said Abdoli. "They gave us training information as well ... how to take pictures, for example. It took about 40, 45 days." The film, which does not specify whether they had faced trial or when this might happen, showed reconstructions of the murders, the suspects were telling how they performed. This part included images of a supposed field on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Abdoli said he traveled to Israel via Turkey and Cyprus. The narrator of the documentary said that a "neighboring country" had helped to bring the suspects to Israel without being detected. The head of Iranian intelligence, Heydar Moslehi, said last month that the Islamic Republic had closed two networks inside and outside the country, he said, were involved in the training of assassins. The killings, mysterious explosions in military sites and a computer virus, Stuxnet, which damaged Iranian centrifuges and was discovered in 2010, seemed to be part of a secret campaign of sabotage aimed at preventing its nuclear program. The U.S. has denied involvement in the murders, while Israel has remained silent. Human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International , accused Iran in the past to obtain false confessions from suspects using physical violence and threats. "In many cases, torture and other ill-treatment are used to extract 'confessions' under duress," said Drewery Dyke, Iran researcher for Amnesty International, to Reuters in an e-mail. "Allegations of torture are routinely ignored and not investigated in court as 'confessions' extracted under duress are accepted as proof."