Missing ‘spy’ not among prisoners released by Iran

The deals to free five Americans held captive in Iran left behind at least two others — an ex-FBI agent who disappeared in 2007 and a Dubai-based businessman jailed in 2015.

Robert Levinson’s family, which maintains he’s being held hostage, went online to post an excerpt of President Obama’s Sunday speech in which he said: “Even as we rejoice in the safe return of others, we will never forget about Bob.”

“We truly hope that he keeps his word,” Levinson’s kin wrote on their Help Bob Levinson Web site. “Our family needs to be whole again.”

Levinson, 67, went missing from Iran’s Kish Island in March 2007. For years, the feds said he had been working as a private investigator, but his family revealed in December 2013 that he was a freelance spy for the CIA.

The other American, Siamak Namazi, 44, was arrested on unspecified charges while visiting a friend in Tehran in October 2015. Namazi, who holds both American and Iranian citizenship, immigrated to the United States in 1983 and is head of strategic planning for Crescent Petroleum in the United Arab Emirates.

He comes from a prominent Iranian family and has advocated for closer ties between his native and adopted homelands.

President Obama made no mention of Namazi during his remarks.

Saturday’s prisoner-release deals also raised the possibility that additional Americans may be locked up in Iran.

Two of the five who were released — Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, and in a separate deal, Matthew Trevithick — were unknown to the public before the agreements to free them were announced.

While little is known about Khosravi-Roodsari or his background, officials say Trevithick, a writer and researcher, had been detained in December and held in Evin Prison in northwestern Tehran for 40 days.

It is still unclear why either of those two men was arrested.

http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/missing-spy-not-among-prisoners-released-by-iran/