Govt told to act against CIA agents holed up here
(Harakah Daily) – Penang-based Citizens International has urged the Malaysian government to expel those recruited by the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out espionage activities against its arch enemy Iran, as revealed in a report by Asian Times.
The paper in a report last December claimed that CIA had been recruiting Iranian students in Malaysia to spy on vital targets in Iran.
In a statement to Harakahdaily, the group’s chairman SM Mohamed Idris urged Home minister Hishamuddin Hussein to immediately expel such agents who were based in the US Embassy, multi-national corporations, academic institutions and media organizations.
“CIA’s recruitment of Iranian students for spying in a friendly country and setting up think-tanks and educational institutions here for such purpose amount to serious interference in our internal affairs by the US and a threat to our sovereignty,” said Idris.
The report states that a dedicated team set up by CIA’s National Clandestine Service not only operate from Iran’s neighbours, but also in Malaysia where there is a large number of Iranian students, who became target due to their good command of the Persian language and inter-cultural competence.
Iranian intelligence has meanwhile identified 42 officers of the NCS operating in several countries and collected detailed information on the scope and nature of their activities. Among these were one “patriotic Iranian student” who had been offered scholarship by a quasi-academic institution as a means of entrapment.
Following an investigation by the Islamic republic’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security into the institution, 30 suspected spies had been netted.
The report added that such spies were embedded within numerous official and unofficial American organizations, including US embassies, multinational corporations, academic institutions, think-tanks and media organizations.
Saying Iranian officials would have informed the Malaysian government of the development, Idris (left) asked whether there had been any follow-up action.
“The activities of CIA here are bound to cause severe strain to the good relations we have with Iran. Further, both Malaysia and Iran are members of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC}and the United Nations and, therefore, it would be in violation of the OIC Charter and the UN Charter to allow our territory to be used for the illegal US-Israel covert war against Iran,” said Idris, who is also president of well-known consumer pressure group Consumers Association of Penang (CAP).
Idris also urged the Malaysian government to stop security cooperation with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the guise of the ‘war on terror’, saying that “in reality, is a war against Muslims and Islam”.
