Son of prominent Iranian found dead in Dubai

From AP:

The son of a prominent Iranian conservative who ran against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 has died in a Dubai hotel in an apparent suicide, a Dubai police official and an Iranian website said Sunday.

The police official said the body, with a slit left wrist, was found late Friday by hotel staff in an 18th floor room.

There was no evidence of an attack and the death is being investigated as a suicide, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.

Dubai police did not provide further details on the man’s identity, but the Iranian website Tabnak, which is close to conservative Mohsen Rezaei, said that the politician’s son Ahmad Rezaei died in Dubai’s Gloria Hotel. It called the death “suspicious,” but offered no other details.

Prior to his return to Iran in 2005, Ahmad Rezaei had lived in the United States and openly criticized Tehran’s rulers. This put his father, a conservative closely associated with clerical hard-liners, in an awkward political position.

Mohsen Rezaei is secretary of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council, an advisory body to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

His father is one of the people suspected of being behind the attack on the AMIA building in Argentina in 1994, and Israeli sources are quoting Iranian news as saying that they think this was a Mossad hit just like the murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh last year.

Given that Ahmad was a critic of Tehran's rulers, this seems unlikely - if this was a hit, Iran might be behind it. Maybe even to send a message to Israel that it can also assassinate people in locked hotel rooms in Dubai if it wants to.

(h/t Yoel)