Cyprus Police Investigate Israeli Owner’s ‘Spy’ Van

Cypriot police have confiscated a van reportedly loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment. (AP)
Cypriot police have confiscated a van reportedly loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment. (AP)
TT

Cyprus Police Investigate Israeli Owner’s ‘Spy’ Van

Cypriot police have confiscated a van reportedly loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment. (AP)
Cypriot police have confiscated a van reportedly loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment. (AP)

Cypriot police have confiscated a van reportedly loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment and have questioned its Israeli owner following media reports that the vehicle was being hired out to spy on people.

Police said Saturday that officers also searched the office of the Israeli’s Cyprus-registered company that is being investigated on possible violations of privacy rights laws, reported The Associated Press.

Police chief Kypros Michaelides told private radio station Astra that authorities are also questioning the Larnaca-based company’s other Cypriot shareholders and are looking into how this van and other surveillance equipment was imported into the country.

The police probe was initiated after local media highlighted an earlier Forbes report on the Israeli it identified as a former intelligence officer who showed off the $9 million van’s spying capabilities.



Iran Denies Targeting Ex-US officials

25 September 2024, US, Cherokee: Former US president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally inside the Mosack Group manufacturing warehouse in Mint Hill. Photo: Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
25 September 2024, US, Cherokee: Former US president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally inside the Mosack Group manufacturing warehouse in Mint Hill. Photo: Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
TT

Iran Denies Targeting Ex-US officials

25 September 2024, US, Cherokee: Former US president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally inside the Mosack Group manufacturing warehouse in Mint Hill. Photo: Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
25 September 2024, US, Cherokee: Former US president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally inside the Mosack Group manufacturing warehouse in Mint Hill. Photo: Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

Iran said on Thursday that accusations it had targeted former US officials were baseless, after former US president Donald Trump implicated Iran, without offering evidence, in assassination attempts against him.
"It is obvious that such accusations are just a part of creating the election atmosphere in the US...., and not even worth a response," Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a statement.
Trump, the Republican candidate to return to the presidency, said on Wednesday Iran may have been behind recent attempts to assassinate him and suggested that if he were president and another country threatened a US presidential candidate, it risked being "blown to smithereens.”
"There have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve, but possibly do, Iran, but I don’t really know," Trump said at an event a pipe-fittings plant in Mint Hill, North Carolina.
Trump made his remarks after US intelligence officials briefed him a day earlier on "real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him," according to his campaign.
Federal authorities are probing assassination attempts targeting Trump at his Florida golf course in mid-September and at a rally in Pennsylvania in July. There has been no public suggestion by law enforcement agencies of involvement by Iran or any other foreign power in either incident.