Robert Levinson, an American Jew, was not included in a prisoner exchange with Iran that came as the U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and the West rolled back sanctions.
Iran on Jan. 16 released five Americans it was holding in its prisons or in detention, four of them as part of a prison swap that included the release of Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post journalist detained on espionage charges since 2014.
The exchange came on “implementation day” of the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal Iran concluded last year with the United States and five other major powers.
As part of the deal, Interpol removed 14 Iranians from its wanted list. A number of news agencies initially speculated that some of those named were suspected of involvement in the deadly bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, but this proved untrue and the reports were retracted.
Levinson, 68, of Coral Springs, Florida, has been missing for nearly nine years. CNN quoted Levinson’s family as expressing happiness for the other families, but saying it was “devastated” that he was not among those released.
His family has acknowledged in recent years that Levinson, a father of seven, had been working for the CIA in a rogue operation at the time of his disappearance from Iran’s Kish Island.
Levinson is a private detective and former FBI agent. For years it had been reported that he was working as a private investigator when he disappeared.
Iran denies official involvement in his disappearance and the Washington Post quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying that as part of the exchange deal, Iran “committed to continue cooperating with the United States to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson.” — jta