The sons of assassinated Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, have revealed additional information about their father’s killing.
The two sons told Iranian media in an interview that their father was shot four to five times, and that his assassination “was really like a war”.
The two also noted that Fakhrizadeh’s wife - probably their mother - was sitting next to the nuclear chief when bullets were pumped into his body as he sat in the driver’s seat of his car, but that she herself was not shot.
The New York Times had said in earlier reporting that Fakhrizadeh’s wife had sustained shrapnel wounds during the attack.
According to their testimony, the two sons were not with their father when he was gunned down by unknown assassins.
“Mr father was hit four, five times by gunfire,” one of the sons says in an interview.
روایت فرزند شهید #فخریزاده از انتقال به بیمارستان: صحنه تروریستی ساده اینبود در حقیقت جنگی تمام عیاربود! pic.twitter.com/WtAEvuMgU6
— خبرآنلاين (@khabaronlinee) December 4, 2020
The sons, whose names were not revealed, said that Fakhrizadeh had been cautioned by his security team against traveling on the day that the assassination took place. However, they said, their father decided to head out for a scheduled meeting regardless of the warnings.
Fakhrizadeh was killed last week by gunmen in a daring raid in Absard, a city near Tehran. He was driving on a rural road in a convoy of three armoured vehicles when a truck was detonated at the side of the road near his vehicle. After that, gunmen emerged and allegedly fired upon his car, killing him. Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a long line of Iranian nuclear scientists to be assassinated over recent years. After the killing, Iran swiftly blamed Israel for carrying out the assassination with the nod of approval from the United States.
Fakhrizadeh had already been publicly named by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2018 as the director of Iran’s alleged covert nuclear weapons programme.
"Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh,” said the Israeli leader after revealing a cache of material on Iran’s nuclear programme Netanyahu claimed has been taken by Israeli agents from a warehouse in Tehran.
