itongadol.- PMO announces 8 Iranian Jews who went missing while trying to escape country were murdered during attempt to immigrate to Israel.
The Mossad has brought an end to the mystery surrounding the disappearance of eight Iranian Jews in the 1990s, the Prime Minister’s Office announced on Thursday, saying they had been murdered.
The families of eight out of 11 Iranian Jews who went missing two decades ago received notifications from the Glilot-based Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center independent research group that their relatives had been slain while trying to immigrate to Israel.
The families of the eight, who were not named, had pressed the government to seek information about their fate as part of its past prisoner exchanges with Hezbollah and Hamas.
In a statement, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office said that the Mossad had investigated and “received from a reliable source, privy to the details, information that these Jews were captured and murdered while escaping [Iran].” The statement did not elaborate on who might have carried out the killings.
Netanyahu said he had ordered the Mossad to extend the investigation into the disappearance of the 11 Iranian Jews.
The task was delegated to David Meidan, the man who acted as the prime minister’s personal representative in the negotiations to free Gilad Schalit from captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Following the release of the IDF tank gunner in October 2011, Meidan was appointed the coordinator for issues relating to missing soldiers and prisoners of war.