Mojtaba Ahmadi, commander of Iran’s Internet warfare program has been shot dead in the woods, The Telegraph reported Wednesday, citing the website Alborz, which serves the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Ahmadi, a specialist in “computer defense,” was found dead in the woods near the town of Karaj, north-west of Tehran, with two bullets in his heart. He was last seen Saturday leaving for his job at the Cyber War Headquarters.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Police in Karaj reported that the killing was carried out by two men on a motorcycle. “I could see two bullet wounds on his body and the extent of his injuries indicated that he had been assassinated from a close range with a pistol,” an eyewitness told Alborz.
The last assassination of an Iranian specialist took place in January of 2012, when one of Iran’s top chemists “who worked in the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz” was blown up in his car. Both Israel and the United States were suspected of the assassination, although there was one major proof to this not being an American job – it worked.
The 2012 job was also done by two men on a bike, who attached a magnetic bomb to his car while he was sitting in Tehran traffic.
Since 2007, five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country’s ballistic missile program have been killed. Iran blames Mossad. Israel denies the allegations. It’s a he said, she said thing.
On its Facebook page, the Cyber War Headquarters has apparently confirmed the Ahmadi shooting, and posted condolences. The Revolutionary Guard said Ahmadi’s death was being investigated and warned against speculating “prematurely about the identity of those responsible for the killing.”
Wise warning.
Readers of Alborz news website responded to the information by warning individuals not to disclose any more information about Ahmadi because it could give the wrong people personal information that could be further used against Iran. “It sounds like a hit…Counter-revolutionaries will take advantage of his murder,” said one post. (RT)
Iran-inspired hackers are still looking for system weaknesses in U.S. power grids, financial systems, and traffic monitoring, according to James Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Lewis told Bloomberg News last August that “the only thing now that stands between us and a big attack is the goodwill of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
And fairy dust! Never give up your faith in the power of fairy dust!
A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army attacked The New York Times’ site in late August, and in April hacked the Associated Press’ Twitter account to falsely report an explosion near the White House, which shook the U.S. stock markets for six minutes.
And that’s when they still had good will! Now I say, run for the hills.