Kidnapped: Betrayed by Britain? Panorama

A British citizen is kidnapped in Dubai, believed to be dead. The

suspects? Intelligence agents from Iran. Now his wife, in her first

television interview, said British authorities are also responsible. I

do blame the UK Government. They put many other people's life in danger.

Why did the British Government and over his private documents to

hardline regime in Iran? He was afraid of being killed. He said that

to you? Yes. Tonight on Panorama, a secret deal that raises serious

questions that go right to the heart of our Government. Someone somewhere

should be saying to us I made this decision because... There should be

some kind of accountability. I think this is sufficiently serious for the

Home Secretary to direct her personal attention to it.

Dubai, a glittering Middle Eastern hub for business and tourism. It is

the playground of the rich and famous but there is another side to

this place. One evening last June, a businessman leaves his office to go

home. Abbas Yazdi is a British citizen born in Iran. In the car

park, people are waiting. He is bundled into his own car and then

driven to a nearby port and put on a boat to Iran. For eight months, his

wife has been trying to find out what happened to her husband.

Everything is so dark and scary. My husband was abducted. I don't know

what happened to him. I didn't know what was going on. Atena Yazdi wants

to know why the British Serious Fraud Office passed her husband's

private business records to the Iranian state. This is unbelievable

because Abbas warned them that they were putting his life in danger by

passing all this information to Iran. She has been told by the

British Foreign Office they believe her husband is dead. But no one

knows for sure. It is not only me. It is the kids also. I can't tell

them if Abbas is, you know, alive. I can't tell them he is dead because I

don't believe it. After he disappeared, Mr Yazdi's family were

given police protection in Britain, but now they are back in Dubai. Arad

and Ayla are trying to adjust to life without their father. Every

Friday and Saturday he would take us to the movies. We miss him. I know.

It is hard. Last month, three Iranians were

arrested in Dubai in connection with Mr Yazdi's abduction. A former

Director of Public Prosecutions had previously warned the Serious Fraud

Office helping Iran could put lives at risk. The Iranian state is known

for its complete contempt of the rule of law, for engaging in routine

acts of torture, arbitrary executions, and an utter disregard

for human rights. It seems extraordinary that a British

prosecuting authority should be cooperating with an Iranian law

enforcement authority in any way, but particularly in connection with

a British citizen and doing that behind his back. Abbas Yazdi grew up

during a run's Islamic resolution, which brought the ayatollahs to

power. -- Iran's revolution. He went to school with influential family

members, including the son of this man, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, who

became President and an important political player. Mehdi Rafsanjani

would become a politician and businessman and Abbas Yazdi was his

friend. They used to be classmates and they were very close to each

other. Aged 24, Abbas Yazdi was imprisoned. His family say he was a

victim of political infighting in Iran between more moderate

reformists like his friend's father President Rafsanjani and the

hardliners. Why was in prison? He was a close friend to Mehdi

Rafsanjani and every time they wanted to put pressure on him and

his family, it was Abbas being the hostage, always like a hostage.

Abbas Yazdi was in solitary confinement for six months, tortured

and made to confess to false charges. One of the things they said

to him when he had to confess was to aspiring for the UK. They gave him

the death penalty. -- spying for the UK. Some of Mr Yazdi's influential

friends in Iran got him temporary leave from prison and he fled abroad

like many others. The conflict between the moderates and the

hardliners has often spilled out and involved retribution and punitive

measures taken by one camp against another at various points. I think

it has gone well beyond the judicial system. The Yazdis came to London in

the 90s and made their home in wealthy Knightsbridge. They had

their children here, and Abbas Yazdi established a business consultancy.

He set up his business and everything necessary to start a new

life in a new country. But it wasn't easy. It was very difficult. In

2003, the Serious Fraud Office came calling. They raided Abbas Yazdi's

office, took away copies of confidential material from his

computers. It was at the request of the Norwegian authorities. They were

interested in Mr Yazdi's business dealings in Iran. I think the best

way to describe him would be as a fixer. And there is no doubt that at

some time in the past, 2003, the Norwegian prosecuting authorities

had taken an interest in a company with which he was associated. In no

way they were investigating a deal between their state energy company,

Statoil, and the Iranians. It was to develop a gasfield off southern

Iran. Fraud investigators here wanted to know if Mehdi Rafsanjani,

then an official in the Iranian oil and gas company, was getting it back

of millions of dollars. -- kickback. And also if Abbas Yazdi was acting

as a front man for his old friend. Cato Schiotz was Mr Yazdi's lawyer

in the Norwegian investigation. He stressed that he had no part in it

and no knowledge of what was the core of the matter. Is it fair to

say Mr Yazdi had a reputation as a fixer, a man who dabbled in a shady

world? I have no indication in that respect. A year later, Norway's

corruption investigation into Statoil's deal in Iran was

concluded. Statoil paid a fine of 20 million kroner, nearly ?2 million.

It was the largest fine in any corruption case in Norway at that

time. But the case was settled and the company admitted no liability.

The Norwegian authorities brought no charges against either Mr Yazdi or

his old friend Mehdi Rafsanjani. Both the British and the Norwegian

authorities dropped any case against him. Say Mr Yazdi was completely

exonerated? Yes, 100%. Abbas Yazdi moved his family to Dubai. Many

expatriates Iranians live here and do business with Iran. What was your

husband doing in Dubai? V has a general trading company. Did he do

business with Iran and did he have contacts and friends there? He has

friends there of course but he did not do any business with the

Government in Iran. Iran's moderates were replaced in 2005 by a hardline

Government under President Ahmadinejad. The rise of this new

Iranian faction means that new deals are being re-examined, holds deals

are being annulled, cancelled, shaken up. -- old deals. One deal

that the regime reneges Don was a multi-million dollar gas contract

with Crescent Petroleum based nearby. Very big economic deals

during that period, including the Crescent deal, did fall prey to

political rivalries and higher-level machinations. Mr Yazdi and present

both said that after initial contacts, he was not involved in the

deal. -- and Crescent. But years later he would be dragged into a

battle over it. The hardliners were soon creating waves internationally,

denying the Holocaust, enriching the uranium reserves. The West feared

for the bomb. And then the Iranian navy seized British soldiers in the

Gulf and Ahmadinejad paraded them on television before releasing them.

The siege of British sailors was a crisis point for the UK and Iranian

relationship. They made it clear that the Iranian establishment would

react recklessly and they had no longer the same checks and balances

that they may have had five or six years previously. Despite this, just

one month later, the British Government was dealing with Iran

behind closed doors. The Iranians contacted the Home Office. They

wanted Abbas Yazdi's records, seized four years earlier in the Norwegian

investigation. The Home Office gets many requests from all over the

world for help in fighting crime and bringing people to justice. But this

request from Iran came at a time when moderates and reformists like

former President Rafsanjani were criticising the hardline Government

and it was looking for evidence of corruption linked to his family. The

Home Office referred Iran's request to the Serious Fraud Office, which

began sending Mr Yazdi's documents to Iran, crucially without warning

him. Those decisions are now being questioned. I think Mr Yazdi's case

shines a light on a very murky area of British justice. We seem to have

had a request for assistance given to the Home Office, who then handed

it over to the Serious Fraud Office, who said it was not for them to

think one way or another. It was just for them to open the filing

cabinets and hand over the materials. The Serious Fraud Office

letter is showing that they passed over the materials from Abbas's

computer to the Iranian side. That is his computer? Later, Atena Yazdi

would discover just how many of her husband's records the Serious Fraud

Office sent to Iran. It looks like that is five Hard Drive images. Yes.

Do we know how many documents? Over 20,000 pages. And the documents were

sent in several batches over a five-year periods. Some might say it

was right his documents came out because that was the murky world he

inhabited. But it is not the murky world that we inhabit. The fact that

he may or may not have been involved in corruption would provide no

justification whatsoever for the British cooperating with the foreign

law enforcement agency that has no respect for the rule of law and

which probably was acting out of political motivation. Abbas Yazdi

soon heard rumours from Iran that his documents were being used to

investigate him over the disputed Crescent deal. He found out his

information was being passed to Iran and he thought it was from the

regime, so he tried to warn them that he was worried for his life and

other people's lives. Mr Yazdi contacted his Norwegian lawyer again

to find out if fraud investigators here had passed his private records

to Iran. Carl Shotts realised -- Cato Schiotz realised how high the

stakes were. He was afraid of being attacked, hurt, killed. Who said

that to you? Yes, he was afraid of his life. The Norwegian fraud

investigators confirmed they had not given any of the sensitive documents

seized in London to Iran. But the UK authorities were dealing with Iran.

A British lawyer instructed by the Iranians met Serious Fraud Office

officials to discuss what Iran had told them was an investigation

involving serious crime. The SFO trawled through Mr Yazdi's records

for information about his international business dealings. All

his computer records, all the documents. It was continuing. Every

time they could collect something, documents. It was continuing. Every

they would pass it to Iran. The Serious Fraud Office even allowed an

Iranian judge to sift through Mr Yazdi's documents in their offices.

Foreign officials can be given access to the SFO for research

before making a formal request for material. But this visit has raised

some eyebrows. I don't recall when I was DPP having meetings with Iranian

officials in my office. But I would hope that in conducting those sorts

of meetings, British law enforcement officials would be extremely

circumspect with representatives of a state like Iran. Mr Ahmadinejad

was re-elected in 2009. Opposition protests were brutally put down.

There were show trials and executions overseen by a judiciary

firmly in the grip of the hardliners. I think the events of

2009 finally persuaded many countries in the west that this was

an out and out repressive government that really was unwilling to

compromise even with its own internal dissidents. But even after

the British embassy in Tehran was attacked in 2011 and diplomatic

staff recalled, the secret flow of Mr Yazdi's documents continued. At

the time the UK didn't have any relationship with Iran. They even

closed the embassies. But under the table, they did these things. Abbas

Yazdi would never have discovered the British were passing his

documents to Iran but for that long-running but obscure case over

the disputed Crescent gas deal. After eight years of legal

wrangling, the Iranians suddenly produced copies of some of Mr

Yazdi's documents. He was very, very upset. He was shocked. He came home

and he was almost shouting and he said, "How could they do that? They

pass even the information about kids' school, the family car and

everything!" In London, lawyers for Crescent wrote to the SFO warning of

the dangers of passing information to Iran. But they couldn't get any

information. According to an SFO letter we've seen, at this critical

moment, they sent another batch of Mr Yazdi's records to Iran after

they'd been warned of the dangers. They seem to be falling over

themselves to be as helpful as possible, indeed handing over on the

face of it more documents than the Iranians were even asking for. So it

did seem like a very cosy kind of relationship seemed to have

developed. The SFO even sent a copy of Mr Yazdi's computer contacts book

to Iran. I know two people are missing, and two are in prison

related to informations SFO passed to Iran. Crescent now instructed

legal heavyweight Ken Macdonald to intervene on Mr Yazdi's behalf. So

what happened when you contacted the Serious Fraud Office? It was clear

from what the SFO told me that the Home Office had sanctioned this and

this had been done at the request of the HO and I also understood this

had been going on for some time. Ken Macdonald wasn't satisfied and kept

warning of the dangers. In Iran, last year's presidential

election campaign was now under way. Moderates were challenging the

hardliners. It was a very fragile moment. No one knew quite who was up

and who was down. So I think the Rafsanjani family's position within

Iranian politics was highly unstable at this time. For hardliners

alleging Mehdi Rafsanjani to be corrupt, Abbas Yazdi's documents on

their past dealings may have been key. They couldn't prove many

accusations against Mehdi so they needed this information I think

because of that again. Back in England, Ken MacDonald was now

because of that again. Back in urgently seeking a meeting with the

Home Secretary, Teresa May. He stressed Mr Yazdi was in danger.

Did you get an answer from the Home Secretary herself at the top of all

this? No, I didn't. How do you feel about that? Well obviously I was

hoping to see the Home Secretary. I thought this was a serious case, a

serious issue. She's a very busy woman and perhaps was too busy but I

was hoping to have a conversation with her and unfortunately that

didn't happen. In Dubai, on the very day Ken Macdonald was chasing the

Home Secretary, Abbas Yazdi was driving to an office block. He'd

decided to give evidence by videolink in the Crescent case to

clear his name. The Iranians were using Mr Yazdi's documents to allege

corruption in the deal. He and Crescent both denied it. I must

leave the premises at a certain time. It's a security concern of

mine. After three hours, Mr Yazdi insisted he must leave. He was

clearly concerned for his safety. I've been subject to numerous

threats. He got warning from Iran - from his well connected friends in

Iran - they are preparing to come and kidnap you. He thought he has

time to prepare, to arrange everything and go out of Dubai.

We've discovered that a flat had been rented several months before in

Deira, Dubai's Iranian quarter. It was used as a base for members of

Iran's intelligence services to spy on Mr Yazdi. The day after he gave

his testimony, three men set out from Deira towards his office. Mr

Yazdi had gone there as normal. He was preparing to give more evidence

the next day. Everything here is just as it was. As the kidnappers

closed in, Mr Yazdi phoned his wife. He said, "I'm very tired. I'm coming

home." He wanted to be relaxed at home and get ready and prepare for

Wednesday, the rest of testimony. Abbas Yazdi used the back stairs

from his office to reach the underground car park. The three men

were waiting in the shadows. They bundled Mr Yazdi into his own

car, and drove up the ramp and out into the evening rush hour traffic.

The car was registered passing through a motorway toll gate heading

to Sharjah, the port adjacent to Dubai. There Mr Yazdi was put into

another vehicle - his car, abandoned. Both his mobile phones,

they were switched off. I tried again and again, and then I was

getting worried. Mrs Yazdi alerted the Dubai security services. It was

a terrible night. All night I was on the phone. Just before dawn, a

witness saw Mr Yazdi being taken aboard a boat in Sharjah, piloted by

an Iranian captain. It set sail across the Gulf towards Iran, as Mrs

Yazdi had warned Dubai's authorities. I said, "These people,

I believe they kidnap him and they're going to take him to Iran."

As the Dubai police began to investigate, Ken MacDonald heard

back from the Home Office. The decision to send the documents had

been sanctioned at the top by a minister. The ministerial decision

was that the Iranians were engaged in a legitimate criminal

investigation, that there were no human rights implications in sending

information about Mr Yazdi to that particular law enforcement agency.

It wasn't a reason that I regarded as being supportable or defensible,

but that was the reason. Two months later, British police told Atena

Yazdi the Foreign Office had new information. The officer said, "We

believe your husband has been killed during the abduction." And I asked,

"Do you have any more information, any proof, any evidence?" And he

said, "No. That's the only thing we have." There's been no further news

about Mr Yazdi. His wife, meanwhile, has discovered the most worrying

piece of information the UK gave Iran - his office address in Dubai.

This is the place they abducted Abbas from.

So the British authorities gave to the Iranians the actual address

where they could find him in Dubai. Exactly. That's terrible. Last

month, the Dubai security servcies arrested three Iranians, caught

trying to dispose of Mr Yazdi's wallet, credit cards and passport.

But then, another bizarre twist. It's now emerged that a few days

after the Dubai police arrested the three Iranians the leader of the

gang, a man who apparently worked for Iran's intelligence agencies was

found dead in custody. We were hopeful they have the main guy and

they can ask him and find out what happened to Abbas. It was so bad.

They had the main person, the main key and they couldn't use it. Mr

Yazdi was seized a few days after a new more moderate President was

elected in Iran, but before he took office. So, was the kidnap a last

throw of the dice by hardliners seeking to damage their enemies? If

they hadn't found what they looking for in Mr Yazdi's documents, did

they seize him to force a confession out of him? There are three sets of

investigators still trying to find out what happened to Abbas Yazdi -

the Dubai police, officers sent from Scotland Yard, and a team sent by

the new Iranian government. But the question remains, what

responsibility should the UK authorities bear for the

disappearance of Mr Yazdi? I do blame SFO and I do blame UK

government. They put Abbas and many other people's lives in danger. And

now I urge them to stand up and find out what happened and save him. We

can't get answers to the serious questions raised by Mr Yazdi's case.

The SFO told Panorama they would not comment and referred us to the Home

Office. The Home Secretary didn't respond and the Home Office said

they couldn't confirm or deny requests for legal assistance from

abroad. I don't think it's any good for them to stonewall. That's a

ludicrous position, with respect to the Home Office, to be adopting.

They really need to provide an explanation about what they were

doing and why they were doing it. I think this is sufficiently serious

for the Home Secretary to direct her personal attention to it. Questions

are now being asked in Parliament. When I ask questions, I'm not

getting answers. We're talking about the wellbeing, the welfare, the

safety of a British citizen. Someone somewhere should be saying to us, "I

made this decision because..." There should be some sort of

accountability. The new Iranian government says it's concerned about

what's happened to Mr Yazdi but they wouldn't speak to us. So, will his

family ever discover the truth? I won't give up until I find out

what's happened exactly where Abbas is. Whatever time it takes, I won't

give up. To tackle crime, the British government sometimes has to

deal with unsavoury regimes. But the question raised by Abbas Yazdi's

story is, should they still do so when it puts someone's life at risk?