Long after he vanished in Iran, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson reappeared in a video and a series of photographs sent to his family over the past year, transforming a mysterious disappearance into a hostage standoff with an unknown kidnapper, The Associated Press has learned.
In the video emailed to his family in November 2010, Mr. Levinson pleaded with the U.S. government to meet the demands of his unidentified captors.
“I have been treated well. But I need the help of the United States government to answer the requests of the group that has held me for three and a half years,” Mr. Levinson says. “And please help me get home.”
The 54-second video showed Levinson looking haggard but unharmed, sitting in front of what appeared to be a concrete wall. He had lost considerable weight, particularly in his face, and his white shirt hung off him. There were no signs of recent mistreatment. But Mr. Levinson, who has a history of diabetes and high blood pressure, implored the U.S. to help him quickly.
“I am not in very good health,” he says. “I am running very quickly out of diabetes medicine.”
The AP saw the video and obtained a government transcript of Mr. Levinson's statement soon after it arrived last year but did not immediately report it because the U.S. government said doing so would complicate diplomatic efforts to bring Mr. Levinson home.
Now, those efforts appear to have stalled, U.S. relations with Iran have worsened and Mr. Levinson's wife, Christine, of Coral Springs, Florida, is expected to release the video herself in a desperate attempt to make contact with whoever is holding her 63-year-old husband.
That represents a sharp change in strategy in a case that for years the United States treated as a diplomatic issue rather than a hostage situation. Christine Levinson has issued many public statements over the years, but she typically directed them to her missing husband or to the government of Iran.
In the nearly five years that Mr. Levinson has been missing, the U.S. government has never had solid intelligence about what happened to him. Levinson had been retired from the FBI for years and was working as a private investigator when he travelled to the Iran in March 2007. His family has said an investigation into cigarette smuggling brought him to Kish, a resort island where Americans need no visa to visit.
The prevailing U.S. government theory had been that Levinson was arrested by Iranian intelligence officials to be interrogated and used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Washington. But as every lead fizzled and Iran repeatedly denied any involvement in his disappearance, many in the U.S. government believed Levinson was probably dead.
The surprise arrival of the video and photographs quickly changed that view but did little to settle the question of his whereabouts. The video, in fact, contained tantalizing clues suggesting Levinson was not being held in Iran at all, but rather in Pakistan, hundreds of miles from where he disappeared. The photographs, which arrived a few months after the video, contained hints that Levinson might be in Afghanistan.
Despite the lengthy investigation, several U.S. officials said, Washington still has no idea who is holding Levinson, where he is or who holds the key to bringing him home. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions.
A father of seven, Mr. Levinson addressed his remarks to “my beautiful, my loving, my loyal wife, Christine,” as well as his children and his grandson. He apparently did not know he also has a granddaughter, who was born in 2008. Family and friends confirmed that it was Mr. Levinson in the video, and authorities also compared his face with computer-generated images that estimate aging.
The video prompted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to announce publicly in March that Levinson was alive and urged the Iranians to help find him. Though the legacy of the 1979 hostage standoff with Iran looms over all relations between the two countries, Clinton did not refer to Levinson as a hostage in March and she softened the U.S. rhetoric toward Tehran.
Source: The Globe and Mail
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