Six Iranians referred to UAE court for alleged kidnapping of Briton in Dubai

Three have been arrested and three others are at large in connection with the kidnapping of Abbas Yazasanpanah Yazdi. They have been charged with kidnapping, forced theft, assault and endangering someone's life.

DUBAI // Six men allegedly connected to the disappearance of a British-Iranian businessman have been referred to Dubai Criminal Court on changes of kidnapping, theft, hiding stolen property, assault and endangering life.

Dubai attorney general Issam Al Humaidan said the six are Iranians. Three are in prison and there are warrants for the arrest of the three at large.

The three held were arrested in January on suspicion of kidnapping Abbas Yazasanpanah Yazdi, a businessman who has been missing since June.

Mr Al Humaidan said State Security had been working for months to “expose the perpetrators and unveil the tiniest details of their crime”, the state news agency Wam reported.

The attorney general said the men watched Mr Yazdi at home and work for a long time “until they had the opportunity to kidnap him to a far place”, where he was drugged and illegally transported out of the UAE “through one of the country’s sea ports”.

“In his confessions and crime scene reconstruction caught on videotape recordings by Dubai Public Prosecution, the first defendant revealed all the details of kidnapping Yazdi, from the start of planning the crime overseas to the execution of the plan,” Mr Al Humaidan said.

Wam did not report on Mr Yazdi’s location or condition.

A London-based Iranian opposition figure said he believed Mr Yazdi had been kidnapped and taken to Iran to gather evidence against Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was arrested after being accused of inciting unrest after the re-election in 2009 of the now former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.