Iran behind two assassinations in Netherlands – minister

Foreign minister says there is ‘strong’ evidence Iran directed killings of two Dutch nationals

Daniel Boffey in Brussels
Tue 8 Jan 2019 15.03 GMT

Iran has been accused by the Dutch government of directing two political assassinations in the Netherlands, triggering EU sanctions against Tehran’s military intelligence service.

The two murders are alleged to have taken place in broad daylight in 2015 in Almere, a city east of Amsterdam, and in 2017 on a street close to the Dutch foreign ministry in The Hague.

In a written statement to the Dutch parliament, Stef Blok, the country’s foreign minister, said intelligence services had found “strong indications that Iran was involved in the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin”.

Blok added the government believed such “hostile actions” violated Dutch sovereignty.

The man killed in 2015 was named as Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, 56, who had previously been sentenced to death in Iran after being accused of planting a bomb at the Islamic Republic party’s headquarters in 1981, killing 73 people.

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