Bob Levinson's family want frozen Iran funds for hostage compensation

They await the return of the former FBI agent's remains 15 years after he went missing on Iran’s Kish Island

US officials told the family of former FBI agent Bob Levinson in 2020 that he had probably died after being abducted on Iran's Kish Island. AFP

The family of Bob Levinson, the former FBI agent presumed dead after he went missing 15 years ago in Iran, have called for Tehran’s frozen funds to be used to pay victims of its hostage-taking policy.

Mr Levinson is believed to have been abducted by Iranian agents in March 2007 while on Iran’s Kish Island investigating a corruption scam during an unauthorised CIA mission.

US officials confirmed to the family in 2020, when he would have been 71, that he had died but the circumstances of his captivity are unknown and his remains are yet to be returned. Iran has said it has no knowledge of his whereabouts and is not responsible for his death.

The family said US officials had reassured them that questions about Mr Levinson would have to be answered before the aborted 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear programme and sanctions was allowed to resume.

The family said they had spoken with Secretary of State Antony Blinken about pushing for his remains to be returned but want to see the US go further and use some of the estimated frozen $11 billion under American control to be distributed to families and victims of state hostage-taking.

“We believe before Iran can have access to it, a portion of those assets should go to the victims of Iran’s hostage-taking,” said David Levinson, one of Mr Levinson’s seven children.

“It could go to compensatory and punitive damages that have already been awarded in the US courts.”

Mr Levinson, a private investigator, travelled to Kish Island in 2007 to question a contact over claims that Iranian officials were taking a cut from oil sales and hiding the money in overseas investments.

He left his hotel after the meeting but has not been seen since March 9 that year. He was last known to have been alive in 2011 when a video released to his family showed him urging the US government to help him return home.

Later pictures showed him in an orange jumpsuit in what was regarded as a deliberate echo of conditions at Guantanamo Bay, the US detention centre.

The photos and videos suggested that he was being held by an unidentified terrorist group but a US judge ruled Iran was responsible and ordered it to pay $1.46 billion to his family.

The damages were to be paid from a special fund established by the US government for victims of state-sponsored terrorism. The fund is financed by fines from companies penalised for breaking sanctions rules but amounts to only a tiny fraction of the sums awarded in the courts.

US congressman Ted Deutch this month called for Iranian frozen funds to be used to pay families and to top up the fund in a joint article in Miami Herald with another of Mr Levinson’s children, Sarah Moriarty.

“We know Iranian officials are desperately seeking access to frozen funds abroad. But they shouldn’t receive one dime so long as they continue their despicable practice of political hostage-taking,” they wrote.

They quoted a decision by President Joe Biden in February to use $7 billion in frozen Afghan assets for humanitarian aid and for the victims of 9/11 attacks on the US.

Aid agencies, Afghan’s central bank and its government criticised the move, saying the money was not for the US to take.

But the family said that Iran had to suffer a big enough financial penalty to ensure that no more families suffered as they had done.

“There are times when I look up at night thinking of the horrors that my father must have experienced,” David Levinson, 34, told The National. “I just think about how desperately he wanted to come home and see his family.

Two senior Iranian military officers were sanctioned by the US in December 2020 over Bob Levinson’s abduction and probable death. US officials say senior officials within the regime were aware of the operation to snatch him.

“People who have knowledge of what has happened to my father are desperately seeking access to frozen funds right now,” said David Levinson.

Those held now include Siamak Namazi, 50, who was detained in 2015, and remains the longest-serving prisoner in Iran. His father, Baquer, also spent time in jail on trumped-up security charges, before being released. But he is still barred from leaving Iran.